It’s very difficult to say specifically for tornadoes. What do we know so far about how climate change might affect tornadoes in the US? Questions are already being raised around what can or should be done to prepare for tornadoes in the future. Nocturnal tornadoes certainly have a disproportionate share of fatalities. That we’re not in what people typically think of as tornado season means that the overall vulnerability and chance that people may get caught unawares was much higher. Īdding to that, we’ve got a tornado that’s late at night when people aren’t necessarily expecting it. As you move into the southeastern United States, it increases exponentially.
But when you’ve got a very long track like this, the chance of hitting something goes up. It means that there are fewer places that are likely to be impacted. Out in the plains, the population is relatively sparse. This area is relatively highly populated, and that’s never a good thing when it comes to tornadoes. Was there anything else that might have made this tornado outbreak especially dangerous, like its path or the fact that it happened at night when it’s difficult for people to see them coming? We’re talking on the order of somewhere around about 30 tornadoes overall, we won’t know until the survey’s finished in the coming days. The sheer number of tornadoes wasn’t overly large. So at least in terms of getting tornadoes in December, that’s not too surprising. We have had tornadoes previously in December, even on Christmas day you can have a tornado outbreak if the conditions are right. This tornado outbreak was certainly on the larger scale for December tornado outbreaks. “Something that will be felt by those communities for a very long time.” So certainly, it will be one of those historic events that goes down in people’s memories and will be something that will be felt by those communities for a very long time. We saw quite a number of fatalities associated with this tornado, had a number of towns absolutely devastated by it. Another aspect of that tornado was that it was particularly intense. We don’t know exactly how long that track was, but it will probably find itself in the upper echelon of the longest track tornadoes we have in history. One particular storm produced an extremely long-track tornado. What I think has made this event stand out was a couple of particularly long-track tornadoes that stretch from Arkansas into Kentucky. What made the tornadoes that struck over the weekend unusual? You really don’t want to see this outcome. In this particular case, part of you is just hoping that something changes in the storm: that it stops doing this and doesn’t hit a town or it misses a town to the south, or it misses that populated area. you sort of know that it’s going to happen, but you can do very little about it. Having seen a few of these high end tornadoes in person and seeing the devastation that they leave behind, there’s a sense of powerlessness that comes from.
I’ll be honest, it’s never a pleasant thought. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.Īs someone who’s studied tornadoes for a long time, what was running through your head as you were watching what happened over the weekend? He tells us what scientists are still trying to learn about tornadoes, and what we might expect in the future. Allen, an associate professor of meteorology with a focus on tornadoes at Central Michigan University. “You really don’t want to see this outcome.” Scientists still need a better understanding of what is the perfect storm of conditions for triggering tornadoes so that they can suss out how things could change in a warming world. Yet the relationship between climate change and tornadoes is still hazy. But what’s normal for the US - which sees more tornadoes than any other country on Earth - could be changing, according to some early research. We know the basic meteorological ingredients needed to cause a tornado to form, as well as where and when they tend to appear. Tornadoes are still somewhat of an enigma to scientists. Residents across Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Illinois are still recovering and searching for missing loved ones. Entire communities were devastated, and at least 90 people lost their lives. The twisters, which struck during the evening of December 10th, plowed across multiple states with incredible ferocity much later in the year than most tornadoes usually hit. Meteorologists were shocked by the tornadoes that devastated the Midwest and Southern US over the weekend.