Community Chat

[songbird]

It has shifted further East and slightly Northward.  Specifically to the Southeastern states.  I saw this interesting article about climate change and weather.  States with the most frequent tonadoes are states like Alabama.  A lot of their storms also happen more overnight. This shift has been going on for quite a while. Don't really know what it means.  It's just more things changing in Nature.  Place like Tulsa Oklahoma will still get them, but more breathing room now. 

Showing the shift from the classic model: 

To the more recent model:

[Ainhisg]

We live in SW Missouri, and we get less tornadoes than we ever have.  We don't even have many watches any longer.  And forget about severe thunderstorms, we don't get those either.  We used to get tornadoes every spring and sometimes fall.  It's been eleven years since the Joplin tornado (EF-5), and there have been very few anywhere since.

[geezerette]

I live in one of the states that is now sited as the new model, and have done so for decades.

We always have considered ourselves to be in a tornado-prone area.  And many have come in at night rather than during the day.

So I don't find anything "new" about this.

[songbird]

I have a freind that lives in Eastern Colorado.  That used to the part of Tornado alley.  Now they rarely have them.  Also rarely get the warnings/watches.  

[Qgirl26]

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@geezerette wrote:

I live in one of the states that is now sited as the new model, and have done so for decades.

We always have considered ourselves to be in a tornado-prone area.  And many have come in at night rather than during the day.

So I don't find anything "new" about this.

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Same for me @geezerette . And even if you aren't in a tornado-prone area, that doesn't mean you still can't get them.

[Icegoddess]

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@geezerette wrote:

I live in one of the states that is now sited as the new model, and have done so for decades.

We always have considered ourselves to be in a tornado-prone area.  And many have come in at night rather than during the day.

So I don't find anything "new" about this.

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Me too, and I agree.  I always thought we were part of tornado alley.  The tornado chasers don't like it too much.  The terrain is not good for chasing and the tornados are often rain-wrapped or part of a wall cloud, so they're difficult to see and don't make impressive photo subjects.

[Sooner]

Having been in a tornado as a child, lived in Oklahoma City area for 55 years, and having relatives associated with the Weather Center and Severe Storms Lab at Univ. of Oklahoma City, I'd say there is no real difference for at least the east core area.

I can say that one thing that HAS changed is the ability to identify and track formation and paths of tornadoes on radar.  They identify far more lower scale tornadoes than even a few years ago.

I would bet that has skewed this to including areas where small tornadoes form and are tracked.  East of OKC isn't where most rotating thunder storms form, and probably they get fewer larger tornado bearing storms moving in from the west.

Tornadoes generally form where cooler fronts are moving east and they clash with warm Gulf of Mexico air and start to rotate. Guess where that happens most? East of Colorado or in eastern part, Texas Panhandle and Western Oklahoma and then Kansas.

Later after spring they move north to plains states and midwest.

[deepwaterdotter]

We certainly do get more tornado warnings here in Wisconsin than I'm comfortable with.    

[Porcelain]

This image in the OP is a little misleading. (not deliberately, just something I noticed) It doesn't show the area where the tornado frequency remained the same.

We have an image of the old tornado alley. And then we see the areas where tornado frequency changed. Not where it remained the same. There is no image that shows the new and complete tornado alley. Does that make sense?

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@songbird wrote:

Showing the shift from the classic model: 

To the more recent model:

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[SilleeMee]

The 'alley' has just gotten bigger with the frequency of tornadoes increasing towards the SE. It really hasn't shifted so much as it has expanded.