Links tagged “tornadoes”

The US has been hit by six F5 winter tornadoes since 1950, the last ones occurring  fifty years ago.

1953-12-05 MS 1957-12-18 IL 1971-02-21 LA 1971-02-21 LA 1971-02-21 MS 1971-02-21 MS # Climate analyst Paul Homewood: "Provisional data from the NWS indicates that the Dec. 2021 tornadoes which hit Mayfield, Kentucky and Edwardsville, Illinois were both EF-3s."

Watts Up With That’s “Everything Climate” site which shows, using actual data, that tornadoes, in fact, “are getting less dangerous.”

In 2017-2018, the U.S. set a record for the longest period in tornado history without a tornado death, despite the dramatic increase in US population since 1950.

In 2017-2018, the U.S. set a record for the longest period in tornado history without an F3 or stronger tornado.

Meteorologist Paul Dorian: Atlantic Hurricanes: "The Atlantic Basin experienced the most active hurricane season on record with so many named storms (30) that the Greek alphabet had to be utilized for only the second time ever, the first being 2005.  In fact, the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was the fifth consecutive season with above-normal activity and 12 of the 30 named storms made landfall in the contiguous US, breaking the record of nine set in 1916.

Pacific Hurricanes: "On the other hand, the Pacific hurricane season was well below normal in terms of overall activity with a total of 17 tropical storms and it was the least active year since 2010.  The Pacific Ocean outweighs in importance the Atlantic Basin when it comes to global tropical activity which ends the year far below the normal levels of an important metric. ... The 2020 Pacific Ocean hurricane season was the least active since 2010 with well below the normal number of hurricanes and well below the number of hurricanes that reached “major” status of category 3 or higher (4 hurricanes, 3 “major”).

Tornadoes: "In terms of tornado activity in the US during 2020, the year will end up below-normal and, fortunately, this year has featured no EF-5 tornadoes which are the most powerful of all. ... The number of tornadoes recorded in the US by NOAA (at least on a preliminary basis) is 1245 and this is below the normal value of 1392 when compared to the mean of the base period 2005-2019. ...  The 2020 US tornado season is that it featured no EF-5 tornadoes which are the most powerful of all.  In fact, it has now been more than 7 years since the last EF-5 tornado struck in the US which was in Moore County, Oklahoma during May of 2013.  According to NOAA, there have been a total of 36 EF-5 tornadoes in the US since 1970 with 14 of those occurring in the 1970s."

Professor Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado Boulder: "The world is presently in an era of unusually low weather disasters. This holds for the weather phenomena that have historically caused the most damage: tropical cyclones, floods, tornadoes and drought. Given how weather events have become politicized in debates over climate change, some find this hard to believe...The US has seen a decrease of about 20% in both hurricane frequency and intensity at landfall since 1900...Data on floods, drought and tornadoes are similar in that they show little to no indication of becoming more severe or frequent...Thus, it is fair to conclude that the costs of disasters worldwide is depressed because, as the global economy has grown, disaster costs have not grown at the same rate. Thus, disaster costs as a proportion of GDP have decreased. One important reason for this is a lack of increase in the weather events that cause disasters, most notably, tropical cyclones worldwide and especially hurricanes in the United States."

Pielke Jr. on how extreme weather is NOT getting worse: 

'Flood disasters are sharply down. U.S. floods not increasing either.'

'Is U.S. drought getting worse? No.'

'U.S. hurricane landfalls (& their strength) down by ~20% since 1900.'

'Recent years have seen record low tornadoes.'

Study warns of 'over simplistic attribution to human causes' of extreme events. 

Professor Roger Pielke Jr.: 'Yet another study finds little basis for attribution of extreme weather (drought-flood-storm) to human-caused climate change.' 

'This is now the fourth year in a row which has been below average.'

“One factor that played into lower tornado totals were the cooler temperatures during winter and in late winter,” Carbin said. “But that flips around in the summer, higher temperatures usually correlate with less tornadoes.”

Flashback 2013: 'Global warming has been blamed for dozens of devastating tornadoes': 'Research shows human-induced warming is likely to lead to more severe thunderstorms' said Jeffrey D. Sachs on November 18, 2013, now the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.