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More tornadoes than usual have already struck the U.S. in 2025, and many of them have been touching down farther east than they had in the past

By last Saturday, the National Weather Service reported that 552 tornadoes had occurred in the U.S. this year, well above the average total of 337 for the period of January through April in 1991–2020. Then an outbreak struck Texas and Oklahoma on Saturday night, killing at least three people. Parts of those two states were at the center of the twister-prone “tornado alley” for most of the 1900s, but this well-known corridor has been shifting steadily eastward in the past three and a half decades. This year, many of the touchdowns that caused deaths occurred in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, all east of the old alley.

Why does the U.S. have so many tornadoes?

Far more tornadoes strike the U.S. than any other country, and this is because of its geography. Wet, westerly winds from the Pacific Ocean become dry as they pass over the the Rocky Mountains, then become high and cool as they blow farther east. Meanwhile, warm, humid air streams northward from the Gulf of Mexico, moving at a lower elevation. Flat terrain along these paths allows the two streams to run into each other. The angles at which they collide tend to create unstable air and wind shear, two big factors that favor tornado formation.

Where has tornado alley moved?

For decades, most of the largest outbreaks occurred across northeastern Texas, eastern Oklahoma, and western Arkansas and Missouri. But between 1989 and 2019, the focus shifted eastward by 400 to 500 miles, covering western Kentucky and Tennessee, plus northern Mississippi and Alabama.

Why is tornado Alley sliding eastward?

Most tornadoes are created by a supercell—a strong thunderstorm with a rotating updraft of air. Supercells tend to form when warm, humid, low-level air interacts with cool, dry, higher air. And climate change is now generating more of that warmer, moister air. Tornadoes also are more likely to develop when the local atmosphere is unstable, and warming increases instability. Climate change is warming the Gulf of Mexico as well, and this can send generous amounts of water vapor into the southeastern U.S., farther east than it tended to travel decades ago. In addition, climate change has moved the rough north-south boundary between dry western U.S. air and moist, eastern U.S. air about 140 miles to the east.

Why does the shift matter?

Tornado shelters are common in Texas and Oklahoma but less so in other U.S. regions. The Southeast is more densely populated, and mobile homes (which often fare poorly in windstorms) are prevalent. Tornadoes in the Southeast also occur at night more often than those that strike farther west do, in part because winds can bring ample moisture from the Gulf after dark. And nighttime makes it much harder to see a storm coming.

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Smart rings are in the middle of a resurgence. That means a lot of experimental ideas and newcomer tech brands you’ve probably never heard of. Enough competitors have cropped up that I spent the better part of last summer rocking six rings like a high-tech mafia don. While these aren’t necessarily bad products (some are pretty good), many aren’t as polished as what you’d see in more mature categories like smartwatches, headphones, and smartphones.

Speaking of which, there are a few things to know about the category. Currently, these devices are primarily health trackers. Their benefit is they’re more discreet and are better suited to sleep tracking than a smartwatch. However, the vast majority don’t include smart alarms or push notifications. This makes them best suited to casual athletes or more wellness-minded people. Hardcore athletes would be better served in most cases by a smartwatch or fitness tracker, with a smart ring as a supplementary source of data. (But that’s quite an expensive endeavor.) Smart rings are also ill-suited for weightlifters, as they can easily scratch against equipment.

With that in mind, here’s the best smart ring for most people in 2025 — and a handful of runners-up worth highlighting for the more tech-adventurous.

I can already hear some of you shouting, “But what about the subscription!” And I agree. Even Oura’s relatively affordable $6 monthly fee can feel more like $100 when you consider the sheer number of apps, gadgets, and services asking for a chunk of your monthly paycheck. However, Oura is still the best in terms of hardware, size range, features offered, app, dedication to research, and experience in the field. Many of the smart rings available today follow the example Oura set this past decade.

The upgrades from the Oura Ring Gen 3 to the Oura Ring 4 were mostly software-based, with minor hardware refinements. You can read more in my review, but the gist is a more accurate heart rate and blood oxygen algorithm, improved automatic activity detection, and an expanded range that spans size 4 to 15. The app has been redesigned to be less cluttered, and in the last few weeks, Oura also officially launched an AI chatbot. (Of the AI chatbots in health trackers I’ve tested, this one is among the more polished implementations, though it often feels like Captain Obvious-level insights.)

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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

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Every week, millions of Americans toss their recyclables into a single bin, trusting that their plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and cardboard boxes will be given a new life.

But what really happens after the truck picks them up?

Single-stream recycling makes participating in recycling easy, but behind the scenes, complex sorting systems and contamination mean a large percentage of that material never gets a second life. Reports in recent years have found 15% to 25% of all the materials picked up from recycle bins ends up in landfills instead.

Plastics are among the biggest challenges. Only about 9% of the plastic generated in the U.S. actually gets recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Some plastic is incinerated to produce energy, but most of the rest ends up in landfills instead.

So, what makes plastic recycling so difficult? As an engineer whose work focuses on reprocessing plastics, I have been exploring potential solutions.

How does single-stream recycling work?

In cities that use single-stream recycling, consumers put all of their recyclable materials − paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, and metal − into a single bin. Once collected, the mixed recyclables are taken to a materials recovery facility, where they are sorted.

First, the mixed recyclables are shredded and crushed into smaller fragments, enabling more effective separation. The mixed fragments pass over rotating screens that remove cardboard and paper, allowing heavier materials, including plastics, metal,s and glass, to continue along the sorting line.

Magnets are used to pick out ferrous metals, such as steel. A magnetic field that produces an electrical current with eddies sends nonferrous metals, such as aluminum, into a separate stream, leaving behind plastics and glass.

The glass fragments are removed from the remaining mix using gravity or vibrating screens.

That leaves plastics as the primary remaining material.

While single-stream recycling is convenient, it has downsides. Contamination, such as food residue, plastic bags and items that can’t be recycled, can degrade the quality of the remaining material, making it more difficult to reuse. That lowers its value.

Having to remove that contamination raises processing costs and can force recovery centers to reject entire batches.

Which plastics typically can’t be recycled?

Each recycling program has rules for which items it will and won’t take. You can check which items can and cannot be recycled for your specific program on your municipal page. Often, that means checking the recycling code stamped on the plastic next to the recycling icon.

These are the toughest plastics to recycle and most likely to be excluded in your local recycling program:

• Symbol 3 – Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, found in pipes, shower curtains, and some food packaging. It may contain harmful additives such as phthalates and heavy metals. PVC also degrades easily, and melting can release toxic fumes during recycling, contaminating other materials and making it unsafe to process in standard recycling facilities.
• Symbol 4 – Low-density polyethylene, or LDPE, is often used in plastic bags and shrink-wrap. Because it’s flexible and lightweight, it’s prone to getting tangled in sorting machinery at recycling plants.
• Symbol 6 – Polystyrene, often used in foam cups, takeout containers, and packing peanuts. Because it’s lightweight and brittle, it’s difficult to collect and process and easily contaminates recycling streams.

Which plastics to include

That leaves three plastics that can be recycled in many facilities:

• Symbol 1 – Polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, widely used in soda bottles.
• Symbol 2 – High-density polyethylene, or HDPE, commonly used in milk jugs and laundry detergent bottles.
• Symbol 5 – Polypropylene, PP, used in products such as pill bottles, yogurt cups and plastic utensils.

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 Many Americans might not have felt major effects from President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs — until now.

That’s because a major shipping loophole expired at one minute past midnight on Friday. The de minimis exemption, as it’s known, allowed shipments of goods worth $800 or less to come into the United States duty-free, often more or less skipping time-consuming inspections and paperwork.

The loophole helped reshape the way countless Americans shop, allowing ultra-low-cost Chinese e-commerce sites like Shein, Temu and AliExpress to pour everything from yarn to patio furniture, clothes to photography equipment and more into US homes.

Its impending end has rung alarm bells across social media, with a baseline tariff as high as 145% depending on the carrier set to take effect on Chinese imports, potentially more than doubling the cost for all those cheap products deal-hungry Americans scooped up.

And the end of the de minimis exemption for Chinese goods will also distill abstract, complicated, messy, hard-to-follow trade policy into something much easier to understand: a receipt.

Major carriers like UPS, FedEx, DHL, and the United States Postal Service say they’re prepared for the changes. The government says it, too, is set; a US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told CNN that “We are prepared and equipped to carry out enhanced package screenings and enforce orders effectively.”

But whether regular American shoppers are ready for the changes is another matter.

Of tchotchkes and trade policy

When President Donald Trump initially closed the de minimis exemption for goods from Hong Kong and China earlier this year, chaos ensued.

USPS briefly stopped delivering parcels from China. Delivery times for parcels that did get shipped stretched longer, with limited information on package tracking in the US.

At the heart of the issue: the sheer volume of packages. More than 80% of total US e-commerce shipments in 2022 were de minimis imports, the vast majority of which come from China, according to a congressional research report.

CBP told CNN it currently processes “nearly 4 million duty-free de minimis shipments a day.” Research indicates that a majority of those shipments come from China and Hong Kong. In total, over the last fiscal year, CBP said 1.36 billion packages came to the US under the de minimis exemption.

That’s a lot of dog bandanas, bead kits, frosting spatulas, and tchotchkes. Regular Temu and Shein shoppers told CNN this week they’ve increasingly turned to the site as they feel made-in-the-USA products have gotten out of reach.

“I can’t afford to buy from Temu now, and I already couldn’t afford to buy in this country,” Rena Scott, a 64-year-old retired nurse from Virginia, previously said to CNN Business.

Lower-income households will suffer the most from the end of cheap Chinese e-commerce sites. About 48% of de minimis packages shipped to the poorest zip codes in the United States, while 22% were delivered to the richest ones, according to February research from UCLA and Yale economists.

The changes could come in stages. Already, for example, Shein and Temu raised prices ahead of the de minimis exemption’s end, hiking prices on several goods tracked by CNN 

“Due to recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs, our operating expenses have gone up. To keep offering the products you love without compromising on quality, we will be making price adjustments,” Shein said in a notice posted online recently. “We’re doing everything we can to keep prices low and minimize the impact on you.”

A Temu spokesperson said the company was changing its business model to encourage more local fulfillment, growing the number of US sellers on the platform.

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