As Tornado Alley Shifts, Southeastern States Can Expect Higher Death Counts, Greater Damage
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Since 2000, nearly 89% of the 1,653 Americans killed by tornadoes — not counting this week’s victims — lived east of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, according to an Associated Press analysis of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. Last year, 100 people were killed by tornadoes in Kentucky, Alabama, Illinois, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi and Pennsylvania. One person was killed in Texas.
It’s not so much a meteorology problem but a people one, tornado experts said. “It’s a function of the human-built environment,” said Victor Gensini, a professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University who specializes in severe storms. “The Mid-South does get a lot of tornadoes, but in the Mid-South we have more things to hit. We have more bull’s eyes on the dartboard. We have more cities. We have more weak frame housing stock. Tornadoes happen more often there at night, which is exactly what we saw last night.”
Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, said traditional 20th century tornadoes, the type that make Oklahoma and Kansas famous, are less deadly because they go for miles without anything in the way. In 1991, he and his wife chased for 66 miles a tornado in Oklahoma that had winds hit 286 mph. It hit two barns; no one but a few cows were hurt. Put that storm near New Orleans at night and dozens of people would be killed, probably many more. In the Southeast “all it takes is a weather event to occur and you’ll have people in the way,” Brooks said.
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About three-quarters of the tornadoes that hit Oklahoma and other Great Plains states occur between 5 and 9 p.m. so people know when to expect them and its more daylight, Brooks said. But in the Southeast they can hit any time, which means more often at night than in Oklahoma, making them more dangerous. Another reason they happen more at night in the Southeast is because they happen more in the springtime and there are just fewer daylight hours, Gensini said. Spring storms are juicier and stronger than summer ones so they don’t need the sun’s daytime heat to add that extra kick of energy to spur tornadoes, he said.
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https://apnews.com/article/tornadoes-climate-storms-science-new-orleans-27d2df41d6d7a9b0bb79dd04b8639f40