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Is it time to widen 'Tornado Alley'? |
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Written by Bryon Okada, McClatchy-Tribune
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Monday, 02 April 2007 |
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FORT WORTH, Texas — It's too early in the severe weather season to find storm chaser Tim Baker behind the wheel of his Nissan Altima equipped with mounted cameras, weather-watching gadgets and communications devices. Instead, he's in his Greeley, Colo., home on the computer, doing research on object of his passion and, in part, his livelihood: tornadoes.
Baker does not begin his daily search for significant twisters in North Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas or Nebraska, the traditional area that severe weather experts long ago dubbed "Tornado Alley."
He and a gaggle of fellow storm chasers begin by searching stretches of Tennessee, Missouri and states even farther northeast, like Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.
"Tornado Alley shifts when the weather patterns shift," he says. "When the weather patterns shift, people need to shift their minds, and that's not what's happening."\
Baker believes that when the climate is in a warming trend, as it has been in the past decade, the more significant tornadoes will be east of the traditional alley. Such trends, while short-lived, should be enough to warrant rethinking of the alley's true boundaries, he says.
In the past 50 years, Texas tornadoes have far outnumbered those in other regions.
According to the National Climatic Data Center, Texas averaged 139 tornadoes per year in 1953 through 2004, followed by Oklahoma (57), Kansas and Florida (55), and Nebraska (45).
Looking at strong to violent tornadoes - those that are F2 to F5 on the Fujita scale - Texas averaged 29 per year, followed by Oklahoma (11) and Kansas and Iowa (9).
Such figures support the traditional boundaries of Tornado Alley.
But there have been 13 killer tornadoes in the United States in 2007, according to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
Ranked in the order of fatalities, the states are Florida (21), Alabama (10), Georgia (9), Louisiana (3), Oklahoma (2), Texas (1), Colorado (1) and Missouri (1).
Going back to 2000, less than 8 percent of the killer tornadoes were in the traditional alley.
The number of deaths outside of the alley could merit the expansion - or elimination - of the name Tornado Alley, said Alan Moller, meteorologist-in-charge with the National Weather Service office in Fort Worth.
Expanding the alley could also help improve preparedness efforts in areas that are now not thought of as being in the alley, he said.
Not surprisingly, outreach programs have been most successful in Tornado Alley.
"People around here are waiting for it to happen," Moller said.
That's because it's been drilled into people's heads - with public service announcements, government declarations, awareness programs, preparedness reminders, media campaigns - that there's a specific tornado season.
The message is easier to define because the peak threat of a significant tornado occurring in the Metroplex is very predictable.
It's 50 days starting in late March and lasting through late May. This trend holds true about 80 percent of the time, according to research by Peggy Concannon of Northern Illinois University, along with Harold Brooks and Charles Doswell III of the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.
By comparison, places like Hattiesburg, Miss., are not on any given day under a great threat of a tornado, Brooks said. But the risk is sort of smeared across the entire year.
There are tornado times of day, typically between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. (Of course, the folks near Carbon in Eastland County, where a tornado briefly touched down before lunchtime Friday, can tell you there are definitely exceptions.)
And there are places where people are more likely to die.
U.S. Census figures show a greater density of mobile homes in the Southeast. There, the proliferation makes deaths more likely, even if the tornadoes are less powerful, said Harold Brooks, head of the Mesoscale Applications Group with the National Severe Storms Laboratory.
Brooks puts the death rate among mobile-home residents "about 20 times the rate of site-built home residents."
When compared with population growth, Brooks said, tornado-related deaths have been steadily decreasing since 1925, when awareness programs began after the Tri-State Tornado, which killed 695 people in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana - the deadliest U.S. tornado on record.
The Southeast remains less prepared, officials said. That area is less experienced with tornadoes, and the season is not uniform, researchers say; plus, their attention is on flash floods, hurricanes and greater weather-related priorities.
That's a tragedy, because mobile homes don't mix well with tornadoes.
An Oklahoma City tornado in May 1999 illustrates the point, as 11 of the 36 deaths were in mobile homes, but fewer than 100 mobile homes were damaged compared with several thousand permanent homes, Brooks and Doswell wrote in a 2001 study for Weather and Forecasting.
This year's 48 tornado-related deaths tell the same kind of story: 35 were in mobile homes, 10 in businesses (including nine at an Alabama school) and three in permanent homes.
It's probably too early to tell for sure, but by the end of April it should be clear if 2007 will be another year that supports the redefining of Tornado Alley.
Baker is pretty sure it will be.
His is not a theory based on statistics compiled over decades. It's observation and his common sense.
Last year was the warmest year for the Metroplex since record-keeping started more than 100 years ago, and many of the recent years have been similarly warm. For two years now, drought has plagued the states in the plains.
Tornado Alley, Baker believes, is too dry to be ripe for tornadoes. On the other hand, a tornado chaser would have better luck in wetter areas to the northeast.
It's a personal theory, Baker admits, and it flies in the face of prevailing thought regarding global warming.
"If there's a change in the pattern and it only lasts 10 years, still that's significant for these 10 years," Baker says. "How long this pattern exists, you can't predict."
— — —
URBAN MYTHS
— Lakes, rivers and mountains are safe from tornadoes.
— Low pressure causes a building to "explode" as tornado passes over.
— Opening a window will equalize the pressure in a building.
— Shelter under highway underpasses are safer. (A ditch is better. Get horizontal.)
— Downtowns don't get hit. (Since March 28, 2000, nobody in Fort Worth has believed this one.)
— — —
IN AN AVERAGE YEAR
— 1,200: U.S. tornadoes
— 70: Tornado-related fatalities
— 1,500: Tornado-related injuries
— 88: Percentage of weak tornadoes (winds less than 110 mph)
— 11: Percentage of strong tornadoes (winds 110-205 mph)
— 1: Percentage of violent tornadoes (winds greater than 205 mph)
— — —
BACKGROUND
— Since about 1925 - the year of the Tri-State Tornado, which killed 695 people - and subsequent preparedness efforts, U.S. tornado deaths have been decreasing if measured in deaths per million people.
— Mobile-home deaths vastly outnumber permanent-home deaths over the past 25 years.
— Mobile-home density is highest in the Southeast, according to the U.S. Census. | Only registered users can write comments.
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