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Earth Science

Tornadoes Are Coming in Bunches. Scientists Are Trying To Figure Out Why. (nytimes.com) 73

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The number of tornadoes so far in the United States this year is just above average. But their distribution is changing. From a report: Tornadoes tend to travel in packs these days, often with a dozen or more forming in the same region on the same day. On the worst days, hundreds can form at once. More than a dozen tornadoes were reported on both Monday and Tuesday this week across the Great Plains and the Midwest, according to the Storm Prediction Center run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Two weeks ago, on the most active day in April, 105 tornadoes were reported. While outbreaks like these have always happened, they have become more common in recent decades.

The total number of tornadoes in the United States each year has stayed relatively consistent over the last several decades, but they now happen in more concentrated bursts over fewer days during the year. In the 1950s through the 1970s, on average about 69 percent of tornadoes in the United States happened on days with fewer than 10 tornadoes, and about 11 percent happened on days with 20 or more tornadoes. These percentages have shifted significantly in recent decades, according to a 2019 study. The researchers found that since 2000, on average only about 49 percent of tornadoes have happened on less busy days and about 29 percent have happened on days with 20 or more tornadoes.

"Now when tornadoes happen, they often happen in an outbreak environment," said Tyler Fricker, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Louisiana Monroe and one of the authors of the study. While the timing of this trend lines up with the planet's rising temperatures, scientists are hesitant to definitively attribute tornadoes' clustering behavior to human-caused climate change.
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Tornadoes Are Coming in Bunches. Scientists Are Trying To Figure Out Why. More

Tornadoes Are Coming in Bunches. Scientists Are Trying To Figure Out Why.

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  • ...But it's Climate Change.

    • Climate change implies that sometimes the climate changes for the better. If the news has made anything clear over 20 years, we're actually facing climate baddening.

      • Depends on where you are I think. We are seeing less cold winters and less hot summers where I live. The only real natural disasters we get are tornados, and there haven't been any more or less than from decades ago, which admittedly aren't very many to begin with. I haven't noticed the "clustering" thing though, again, we don't get very many tornados, maybe three or four per year in my general area.

      • Re:Not saying it's Climate Change... (Score:5, Funny)

        by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Friday May 10, 2024 @03:00PM (#64463337)

        we're actually facing climate baddening.

        Weather events so horrible that even Grammar is getting its ass kicked.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 )

        Climate change implies that sometimes the climate changes for the better. If the news has made anything clear over 20 years, we're actually facing climate baddening.

        Not clear. News is always focussed on the bad things. There are places where climate change is making the climate better, but these effects just don't get the press.

        And, it doesn't really help to tell people whose agricultural base (say) is destroyed by climate-change induced drought "no worries, other people in a different country are experiencing more favorable conditions for farming."

        • There are places where climate change is making the climate better,

          Name one. I don't think warmer temperatures in upper Canada are good thing considering the permafrost is no longer permanent and releasing not only vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere, but also the possibility of long dormant pathogens [science.org] being revived [nih.gov] due to warming temperatures.

          • There are places where climate change is making the climate better, Name one.

            Greenland.
            "Rising world temperatures might throw Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, and other low-latitude nations into generations of misery, while causing Canada, Greenland, and Scandinavia to experience a rip-roarin’ economic boom. Many Greenlanders are already cheering the retreat of glaciers, since this melting stands to make their vast island far more valuable. Last July, The Wall Street Journal reported that the growing season in the portion of Greenland open to cultivation is already two weeks longer

          • One thing I remember from history class is that Russia was always trying to conquer other countries so they could have a warm water port. They currently have Sevastopol thanks to the invasion of Crimea, but maybe they'll finally get one without having to invade someone.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward
              Except Sevastopol is Ukranian. And the Russians fleet has already fled from there. It's too dangerous to have their ships anywhere near it.

          • Name one.

            Ok, Alberta where growing barley [ualberta.ca] will benefit. It's a long way west from Upper Canada [wikipedia.org] - which incidentally was well south of the permafrost line - but it is Canada. Indeed, in general the climate predictions for much of Alberta are milder winters and cooler wetter summers which I would definitely argue is a nicer climate....but then I am British so your mileage may vary.

            Of course the problem is that when you mention this the climate activists go nuts (the university in the article got a lot of pushback

      • Climate change implies that sometimes the climate changes for the better. If the news has made anything clear over 20 years, we're actually facing climate baddening.

        Yeah, I think things are worsening. It's worrisome that these tornadoes are breaking out in bunches. The news has even stated that these tornadoes are more powerful than the average as well.

      • Actually no. Tornadoes are more frequent now but the more severe damaging ones are much rarer. You can find all this data on government websites.

        • Definitely what I've seen here. In the last few weeks, I've seen tornadoes reported to the north and south of me with these storms and multiple tracks just a few miles apart. But all have been EF0. Usually we may see one EF1 in the same amount of time at the peak of spring storm season.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 )
      Unless you can make some testable prediction that we can measure you may as well be saying that the gods are angry with us. It's even more stupid in a way as people who understand science really ought to know better. It's perfectly fine to identify and report on a pattern without having any idea why it has emerged.

    • Re:Not saying it's Climate Change... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Friday May 10, 2024 @02:57PM (#64463327)

      SCIENTIST: Sure, but HOW is climate change causing this phenomenon?

      CABLE NEWS: Top Climate Scientist has "Serious Questions" About Climate Change

    • not saying it's gods wrath on christians for being bad stewards but it's gods wrath,

  • It's what they've always done (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TykeClone ( 668449 ) <TykeClone@gmail.com> on Friday May 10, 2024 @02:36PM (#64463251) Homepage Journal
    That + better detection.

  • Data repeatability (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ebonum ( 830686 ) on Friday May 10, 2024 @02:38PM (#64463253)

    Today, if there are 25 tornadoes in an area over a short period of time, we can see and study each one in detail. Satellites and ground radar are pretty good. In the 1960's and 1970's, I bet they frequently miss counted the number of tornadoes in a group of tornadoes. In the 1950's, the population density was lower. I'm guessing there were lots of tornadoes in sparsely populated areas that that were never recorded at all. Group of tornadoes or no group.
    Today, if there are multiple tornadoes at night, we can get an accurate count. There is no way the counts from the 50's, 60's and 70's for night tornadoes were correct.
    Not saying this is junk science or there is nothing here. I am saying the error bounds on the data have changed drastically over time.

    • That's super insightful. Wish I'd had mod points even once this year...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        Mine mysteriously broke until I emailed them and they fixed their problem.

        • I've emailed them. They don't fix them.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kackle ( 910159 )
            Ah... Email again? Or you could start a new Slashdot: no dupes, actual editing, user "executions" where a post voted down so much would ban someone for a week, etc. :) I'd sign up!

            • Not sure what you're referring to, but I've emailed on this subject twice I think, with no response. And I've bitched about it in comments hoping someone would see it several times.

    • What you say about improved sensing must be true if you go back far enough, but I don't see how it's consistent with "The total number of tornadoes in the United States each year has stayed relatively consistent over the last several decades."

      If the number of estimated tornadoes is simply the number observed, and the ability to observe has increased while the number of actual tornadoes has stayed the same or increased, then the total number of estimated tornadoes should have gone up.

      (Actually I would su

    • There aren't that many tornadoes clustered together. I'll give you an example local to me. A couple weeks ago, there were maybe 5 tornadoes surrounding where I live. None directly overhead, but one several miles to my north, and a few to the south. One of them definitely broke up and re-formed along the same track. If you have clusters of 5 in a 50 square mile area, that's not hard to count - you might get 100 tornadoes across a 5 state area over 24 hours but it's not as hard to count as you make it so

  • NyTimes loves for people to not read their articles. I'm happy to oblige them. Is there a different source for this ?

  • tornado outbreaks are not new (Score:5, Informative)

    by at10u8 ( 179705 ) on Friday May 10, 2024 @02:45PM (#64463287)
    With my own eyes I saw the 1965 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak [wikipedia.org] or the 1967 Oak Lawn tornado outbreak [wikipedia.org]. A quick search finds a whole lot of other days on which there were tornado outbreaks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 )
      Yes, anecdote trumps data every time.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by at10u8 ( 179705 )
        One of the 1967 tornados went through my yard. It was initially recorded in the federal tornado database, but because of the severity of the other tornados on that day it was omitted from the state database. At a later point someone in charge of the federal database decided that the state database was more reliable and they deleted my tornado from the federal records. In this case one of the other people affected by my tornado was an employee of NOAA, and he pointed out the news coverage of the deleted torn
  • Just slap some AI on it. It'll be fine.

  • God is punishing [boogeyman du jour] for [subject of "Two Minute Hate"]!

  • Just seems like a scheduling change by mother nature to me.
    All kidding aside, my first thought was urban build out affecting the interactions between terrain and the atmosphere.

  • Back in the early 70's, I counted 13 tornadoes and funnel clouds one afternoon.

    And that was just the one's I saw.

    • They're not saying clustering never happened. Just that the amount of clustering is increasing and the number of days with tornadoes in a year is decreasing.

  • Better get started right away, or you know, whenever. Wind Dieties [wikipedia.org]
    Oh! Science! I missed that. Y'know, scientists just want stuff.

  • Ever since the high-res Doppler RADAR systems went online we've counted many more tornados, usually close together.

    The only explanation is that Doppler radar *caused* the tornados! Epic backfire.

    Because science!

    j/k it was cow farts.

  • This will almost certainly be what happens when warming occurs in the Northern Pacific.

  • A group of tornadoe's is called a "tornado family." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    (And I threw in a misplaced apostrophe to boot.)

  • No wonder tornadoes cause so much damage in the US. It looks like they build their house out of plywood! What can you expect to happen when you live in what is basically a tent?
  • It's all those d....m windmills! They are introducing turbulence twisting the wind and slowing wind speed that would blow the tornadoes apart. Weather is a chaotic process and tiny fluctuations at one location causes effects of magnified significance. The infamous butterfly effect where a butterfly flapping its wings in the amazon causes a hurricane in india. Well we have installed massive "butterflies" all over the freaking country without analyzing their effect on weather patterns. It's basic unintended

  • Who didn't see this coming? I mean, it's often more affordable to get things in bulk, right?

    I go to the grocery store, buying 12 individual apples is more expensive than buying a bag of a dozen. I go to the booze mart, and there's discounts for buying 6 or 12 bottles of wine. At the bakery if I buy a dozen donuts they give me an extra one for free.

    All we're seeing here is that tornadoes finally decided to get into the "buy in bulk and save" game.

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