Button up your overcoat. Keep your umbrella within reach. Now you're ready for "Storm Stories," which returns for a new season on the Weather Channel — and will help keep things stormy during the network's special Tornado Week.

The series, which chronicles true stories of survivors and rescuers battling extraordinary weather events, begins with the tornado that slammed Windsor, Colorado, last spring. It airs Sunday at 8 p.m. EST.

More new episodes air at the same time Monday through Thursday, featuring the deadly tornado that struck Parkersburg, Iowa, last year; the Greensburg, Kansas, tornado that wiped out the entire town in May 2007; the "Super Tuesday" tornadoes that cut a swath over a wide area of Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee in February 2008; and the "Boy Scouts Tornado" that hit the Little Sioux Scout Ranch in western Iowa last June.

Along with "Storm Stories," the Weather Channel will introduce other programming to mark the start of tornado season. Programmes include "Tornado!" — which delves into the danger and unpredictability of tornadoes (airing Monday at 9 p.m. EST) — and "Super Outbreak," a new episode of "When Weather Changed History" that revisits April 1974, when 148 tornadoes tore through the Midwest and South, killing 335 people (Wednesday at 9 p.m. EST).

On-air meteorologist Jim Cantore is host of "Storm Stories."

Other shows to look out for:

• t started with heated words exchanged between a field hand named Pete Hernandez and his employer in the tiny town of Edna, Texas, in 1951. Things got out of hand, and Hernandez murdered his boss. The case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, where a band of underdog Mexican-American lawyers successfully challenged routine judicial discrimination against Mexican Americans. The documentary "A Class Apart" tells the story of this landmark legal case, Hernandez vs. Texas, which held that Mexican Americans were "a class apart" and did not neatly fit into a legal structure that recognised only blacks and whites. It addressed not Hernandez's guilt, but whether he could receive a fair trial with an all-Anglo jury deciding his fate. This "American Experience" episode airs Monday at 9 p.m. EST on PBS (check local listings).

• On the premiere of "The Chris Isaak Hour," country superstar Trisha Yearwood starts things off with a song accompanied by Isaak and his band, Silvertone. Only then does Isaak sit down with his guest for a cozy chat. That's the format for Isaak's new talk-and-music series, airing Thursday at 10 p.m. EST on the Bio channel. Singer-songwriter-actor Isaak previously starred in the Showtime comedy "The Chris Isaak Show" and has released nine albums. On his new series, he intersperses talk and performance for a well-rounded visit with each guest. In future weeks they include Stevie Nicks, Smashing Pumpkins, Chicago, Glen Campbell, Michael Buble and Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens).

• The nation's flawed system of foster care provides the backdrop for a new Lifetime movie, "America," starring Rosie O'Donnell. Based on E.R. Frank's book of the same name, the film centers on 17-year-old America, a withdrawn and troubled boy who has been in foster care since infancy (played by newcomer Philip Johnson). He's the newest patient of Dr. Maureen Brennan (O'Donnell), who's a therapist at a residential treatment facility for foster kids on the cusp of "aging out" of the system. Ruby Dee plays the elderly nanny to the foster family with whom America found a brief measure of stability as a child. But now, after years in cruel limbo, a tormented, suicidal America is under the care of Brennan, whose support gives him a last chance to reclaim his life. "America" premieres Saturday at 9 p.m. EST.