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Moore Oklahoma Tornado 20May2013
- Thread starter Huntn
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Heh.. That's not much of an alley. Try expanding it from as far south as the end of I-35 in Laredo, to as far west as the end of I-44, up north through the I-35, I-44, I-49, and I-29 corridors. Anything in that range is fair game.
I'd even say to draw a line from Laredo north to Canada, and then follow the Mississippi River from Lake Superior all the way down. That's the alley. Yes, the most violent of the tornadoes happens between Dallas, Joplin, and Wichita, but the alley when conditions are right, is a *****.
Personally, my family is safe. Worst was a few blocks away in Edmond. Father is in Midwest City near Tinker AFB, 2 other aunts were Midwest City and OKC.
I miss the midwest (primarily my hometown), but the tornadoes I certainly do not miss.
BL.
Can you people tell me why tornados happen predominately in the central United States? I was reading up on EF5 tornados on Wikipedia and aside from a couple touching down in Canada and Germany, they're all in the central United States.
Other than some portions of Australia, it's the one best place on Earth for tornadoes to form. You've got cold air from Canada drifting south, meeting up with warm air from the gulf heading north. These fronts violently intersect over a vast stretch of almost perfectly flat land that does nothing to break up with winds. End result: huge storms that spin off tons of tornadoes.
I saw various interviews with the survivors, where they were asked "did you thank God for your rescue?" or where they told "God answered my prayers" when they survived. Well, if God was responsible for their rescue, then God was also responsible for the tornadoes.
Thanks God!
Thanks God!
Glad to hear.
Well...(Response withheld to avoid thread ending up in PRSI forum).
I was thinking Global Warming might be adding to the storms, as more heat in the atmosphere..., but this National Geo Article says the jury is still out on that although storms themselves seem to be getting stronger more often. As far as tornadoes becoming more damaging, I watched a show a while back that said, one reason we see more damage from storms is that more people now live in storm prone areas. For hurricanes, South Florida was a prime example.
I wouldn't doubt it at all. In fact, the part of the country where I live could be used as a prime example that...well...something strange could be going on.
I live in what the cool meteorologists call the Dixie Alley. We probably have the second highest concentration of tornadoes in the world, though nowhere near as bad as what they experience in the Midwest. In the past, we could expect to see a good number of weak tornadoes pass through the area between April to June. Sometimes a few trees gets uprooted. Sometimes a barn gets blown over. While dangerous, they're rarely ever truly life threatening.
That changed with the 2011 and 2012 tornado seasons. I think the April 27th storm doubled the amount of high level tornadoes the state had seen over the last 50 years in a matter of hours. In 2011, an EF4 misses my house by a little over a block. 11 months later, I sat on my neighbor's porch and watch a wall cloud form the funnel that would eventually hit Harrison, TN and destroy over 300 houses.
Weather like that is practically unheard of around here, yet we got hit twice in a row. Fortunately for us, we've managed to miss the worst of it this year. At least thus far.
So is this proof of global warming? I can't say for a fact. It could very well be nothing more than two isolated occurrences. A couple of bad years. Enough time hasn't passed to formulate a new weather trend just yet.
...though it does make you think.
Here's the short version if it.
The Central US is in the perfect storm (pun intended) area for storms like this. They get the cool air and weather patterns coming off of the Rocky Mountain range, which flows from west to east (more importantly, northwest to southeast). In the summertime, they also get the very warm and humid weather that comes from the Gulf of Mexico (read: same system paths that Hurricanes may take).
When those two weather patterns meet, the result is very violent storms, flooding, and tornadoes. Most of those patterns meet somewhere between as far east as Kansas City, west to Topeka, and south through Wichita, Oklahoma City, Lawton, and Dallas/Ft. Worth areas. Basically, along Interstate 35. That area may stretch, depending on where the weather phenomena occurs. So the further north you go in that alley, the further away you may be from the warm fronts, while still catching the cold fronts from the mountains.
Vice-versa for the south. So you may not see this type of weather in say, Austin, San Antonio, or Corpus Christi, as they may catch the hurricane weather from the warm front, just as you may not see this in say, Rapid City, SD, or Fargo, ND, because of how that warm front may have dissipated after making landfall further down south.
So it is just that geographical makeup of the land, along with the weather fronts that occur, that cause it to be the place for tornadoes.
BL.