Tornado season arrives up to two weeks earlier in Plains
The period of peak tornado activity in the southern and central Plains occurs up to two weeks earlier than it did 60 years ago, says a study by Montana State University. The authors of the study say documentation of the shift could help residents of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and northern Texas prepare for the destructive storms. Peak activity in “Tornado Alley” runs from early May to early July. That’s seven days earlier than in the mid-1950s. Aside from Nebraska, the shift was nearly two weeks. There are about 1,300 tornadoes a year in the United States.
Researchers did not attribute the shift to a specific cause. However, earlier development of tornadoes would be expected in a warming climate, they said. The study found one correlation with a global weather pattern – when there is an El Nino between January and April, peak tornado activity in Oklahoma occurs earlier in the spring.
The study, “Peak tornado activity is occurring earlier in the heart of ‘Tornado Alley,'” was published in Geophysical Research Letters, the journal of the American Geophysical Union, and is available here.