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.
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.