30 tornadoes touched down on April 16, 2011 Author: Tim Buckley Updated: 11:01 PM EDT April 15, 2021 Friday marks 10 years since 30 tornadoes touched down on a single Saturday afternoon in North Carolina. The storms killed two dozen people as they swept across the state. If you lived here at the time, it's a day you won't soon forget. 30 TORNADOES The setup for severe weather was remarkable. A strong cold front was on the way to North Carolina from the west. Warm, humid air was already in place over NC and continued to stream in from the south. "This was a textbook setup in every way for tornadoes," says WFMY Chief Meteorologist Tim Buckley, who worked in Wilmington, NC at the time. "It was well known that this was going to be a bad severe weather day." And it was.