Tornado season deadliest in a decade

[RamboLiberal]

Source: USA Today

The USA has been ravaged through mid-May by a near-record number of tornadoes that has pushed the death toll — including 47 killer twisters over the weekend — to a 10-year high.

The deaths of 98 people attributed to tornadoes this year has made 2008 the deadliest year thus far for tornadoes since 1998 and the seventh deadliest since modern recordkeeping began in 1950, The Weather Channel said.

Such a rate could make 2008 the year with the most tornadoes since 1950.

"We are on a pace that continues a record number" of twisters, said Greg Forbes, severe weather expert at The Weather Channel.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/tornadoes/2008-05-12-tornado_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

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Just where the jet stream is located this year? Or is global warming a factor?

I'm 55 and from what I remember growing up is there would be a few violent tornado outbreaks a year, but this seems to be happening almost weekly since about February, even a couple of times a week.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I think it is a sign of the earth changes

I've lived in the Midwest all my life, and this is the first time I remember so many tornadoes occurring so early in the year. I believe this is an indication of the earth changes that the GOP denies are happening.

[pattmarty]

2. What global warming???????

[RantinRavin]

3. So you are saying global warming was worse 10 years ago

since that was the last time there were this many deaths from tornados.

[pattmarty]

5. Sarcasm.............. Cool your jets, man/woman.

[Diogenes2]

6. There seems to be an increase in the number and frequency

of extreme storms this year. The fatality count doesn't reflect the number of deaths per storm at all. I have lived in Independence, Mo for almost 50 years. NOTHING like the storm that passed through here on May 2 has EVER occurred before during that time. Your attempt at a death-count-based assault on the increase in aggressive weather patterns, probably the results of global warming, has serious flaws.

[Auggie]

7. From Wiki:

Associations to climate and climate change

Associations to various climate and environmental trends exist. For example, an increase in the sea surface temperature of source region (e.g. Gulf of Mexico and Mediterranean Sea) increases moisture content, potentially fueling an increase in severe weather and tornado activity, particularly in the cool season.<53>

Although insufficient support exists to make conclusions, evidence does suggest that the Southern Oscillation is weakly correlated with some changes in tornado activity; which vary by season and region as well as whether the ENSO phase is that of El Niño or La Niña.<54>

Climatic shifts affect tornadoes via teleconnections in shifting the jet stream and the larger weather patterns. The climate-tornado link is confounded by the forces affecting larger patterns and by the local, nuanced nature of tornadoes. Although it is reasonable that the climate change phenomenon of global warming may affect tornado activity, any such effect is not yet identifiable due to the complexity, local nature of the storms, and database quality issues. Any effect would vary by region.<55>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado

[RamboLiberal]

11. And when do you think global warming started?

10 years ago we were already well in to it!

[RL3AO]

4. While deaths don't indicate an active season, they do corrilate.

You could have a non-active season that has one tornado kill 500 people. The most active season was in 2004 with 1819 tornadoes.

[lonestarnot]

8. Apparently the midAtlantic is getting a dousing.

[superconnected]

9. Again? It was the deadliest season two years ago when we had the most tornados then too.

I suspect we'll just keep outdoing ourselves. Couldn't be that hole in the ozone...naw...

[gratuitous]

10. Aren't we real early in tornado season, as well?

Bad time to be setting records like this. It's as if someone broke Barry Bonds' single season home run record in July, with August and September still to come.

Meanwhile, I wait with great anticipation to hear what the likes of John Hagee and Pat Robertson will blame this latest spate of tornados on. When government negligence and incompetence drowned New Orleans, they were right out front about exactly why God was so p-o'd at the Big Easy. What are they going to tell their flock was so wrong in rural southern counties and towns that God had to smite them so heavily? Or was this really the work of You-Know-Who, perpetrated while God was taking an afternoon snooze?

[RamboLiberal]

12. April & May is a prime season for deadly tornados

I thought some of the deadly ones we were hearing about in February and March were unusual though tornados can occur then.

Seems to me as well in the area I live - PA - we get more winter thunderstorms than I ever remember growing up. It was rare to hear thunder in the winter when I was a kid.

[RamboLiberal]

13. More info

"There are several things going on the atmosphere: a progressive pattern in jet stream. … There's also plenty of fuel for these storms in the form of a sharp temperature contrast in the United States," said Jay Searles, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University. "There's been record heat and record cold over the month of April and the first part of May. Last year … everyone got warm in the same time. The temperature difference wasn't as strong."

Those extremes may be attributable to La Nina, a cooling of the Pacific Ocean, that has happened in the past year, Searles said.

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There may also be a connection to a warming Gulf of Mexico, which in the winter had temperatures that were a bit warmer than normal, Penn State's Markowski said. "The warmer that the ocean is the more water evaporates to its surface," Markowski said. Moisture is a key ingredient of tornado development.

"Years when the Gulf of Mexico is really warm, we tend to have more tornadoes."

Despite this, Markowski stressed that there is no proven connection between global warming and tornado development.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Weather/Story?id=4838271&page=2

In areas of the country where tornadoes are possible, and I'd even include my state of PA where it has happened, builders should be required to build houses with cellars or a storm shelter (and I see by Google those are made and available) and mobile home parks a community storm shelter or for individual mobile home owners to build/include a storm shelter. Be worth the cost.

[DLnyc]

14. Seems like more tornados and happening earlier in the year.

This table, and the graph below it, makes it seem pretty clear.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/torn/monthlytornstats.html

[CatholicEdHead]

15. There is more cold air and the jet stream is farther south

We are 2-3 weeks behind way up here, it does not feel like May, it has been cold since last November.

The Jet stream should be over Minnesota and southern Canada by now but it is from the Ohio River Valley to the Gulf Coast this year.