The weather in Texas and Louisiana could cause damage on Thursday
Storms, tornadoes and severe weather: What are the worst storms of the century? An update from Lin, CNN Weather Brief, Jan. 20, 2023
More people are at risk from the eastward shift because they are more densely populated than those in the traditional tornado alley of Kansas and Oklahoma. The population living in mobile homes and manufactured homes are more likely to be killed by a tornado.
The problem will only get worse in the coming decades. “The frequency of intense storms will increase,” explains Ning Lin, a climate scientist at Princeton University and the lead author of the new study.
He said to think of a pair of dice. On one die, you altered the value of five to six, which means it now has two sixes — raising the chances of you rolling the pair of dice and getting the value 12. Although you can’t immediately attribute that value of 12 to the change you made, you just altered the probability of that event occurring.
Scientists have warned that the rise in greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere is drastically changing the climate system, causing the jet stream — fast-flowing air currents in the upper atmosphere that influence day-to-day weather — to behave oddly.
“When you start putting a lot of these events together, and you start looking at them in the aggregate sense, the statistics are pretty clear that not only has there sort of been a change — a shift, if you will — of where the greatest tornado frequency is happening,” Gensini previously told CNN. “But these events are becoming perhaps stronger, more frequent and also more variable.”
Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared in the weekly weather newsletter, the CNN Weather Brief, which is released every Monday. You can sign up here to receive them every week and during significant storms.
January 2023 will be remembered more for its tornadoes and severe weather than for more traditional winter weather like snow and ice for everyone east of the Rockies. January is not typically a severe weather month, but this year was a big one.
The number will go down slightly once all the reports have been surveyed, but it is still staggering when you consider the average number of January tornadoes is around 50, putting this year’s total at more than triple the average.
“Most winters you have these repetitive cold fronts that come through, and they scour out the low-level moisture, which is really important for thunderstorm development,” explained Matt Elliott, warning coordination meteorologist at the storm center.
The South and Southeast ran 10 to 15 degrees higher than normal for the month of January, making for unstable weather and ripe conditions for tornado development.
Houston is in its second-warmest January on record and was hit by a number of tornadoes in a matter of a week.
Weather Forecasts for Arkansas, Arkansas, and South Central Texas During the 2018-2019 Eleven-Frequency Hurricane Irregular Recession
“I wish we could say with some certainty how the spring would evolve. We just can’t. “Oftentimes we have a busy, cool season, and then it’s followed by a quiet spring season, but sometimes it’s vice versa.”
“Summer might be coming down a little bit, and winter might be coming up a little bit. They are competing with each other. There may be some subtle changes in the locations that we are looking at very closely.
Flooding and wind damage from hurricanes is getting more common in the United States, and that trend will accelerate and threaten millions of people as the Earth gets hotter according to new research.
Another disturbing trend was found by Lin and her colleagues. Today it is unlikely that two damaging storms will hit the same place in quick succession, although such disasters got slightly more likely over the second half of the twentieth century.
When storms happen at the same time, it’s deadly, like in 2005 when Hurricanes Rita and Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, or in 2017: Hurricanes Harvey, Harvey, and Maria hit Puerto Rico.
That’s bad news for several reasons. “Communities need to bounce back from disasters,” said Lin. There is less time to recover if people are hit by flooding and wind damage.
The government’s emergency response could be overwhelmed by it. That happened in 2017, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency struggled to respond to three major storms at the same time, and millions of people were left waiting for basic assistance with food and shelter.
The storm system that brought several feet of snow to parts of California will move eastward Wednesday eventually triggering the severe outbreak expected on Thursday.
The ArkLaTex region, which includes eastern Texas, northern Louisiana, and southwestern Arkansas, is at risk of severe weather on Thursday with damaging winds up to 80 mph, baseball-sized hail, and possible tornadoes.
It will be hot in the east and central parts of Texas where storms will start to pop up on Thursday. Temperatures have been near record high levels for this time of year across the Southeast this week and this warm air will add fuel for the storms.
Baton Rouge is set to tie or break a temperature record before the beginning of violent weather in Louisiana. San Antonio and Houston are also close to record-breaking temperatures and could see numbers as high as 88°F and 86°F respectively.
The line of severe thunderstorms will bring the possibility of isolated tornadoes, hail and damaging winds stretching from middle Tennessee into central Alabama in the morning Friday until noon.
Small hail and damaging wind gusts could hit eastern Kentucky and the western Carolinas on Friday. The threat is expected to go away late Friday night.
Heavy rainfall of 3 to 6 inches is expected through Thursday night with the potential for localized higher amounts. There will be many flash flooding events.
The study finds a general increase in the number of supercell counts, but it also finds huge shifts in where and when they hit, which are more to the east of the freeway than the west.
A professor of meteorology and disaster geography at northern Illinois University says tornadoes and hail are the “dominant producers of significant tornado and hail” in supercells. Supercells have a rotating updraft of wind which can last for hours.
Warming Fueled Supercells Will Hit the South East More Often a Study Warns: Ashley, Markowski, and a Tornado Expert
A study used simulations to predict what will happen with different levels of carbon pollution. But Ashley said that stormier future seems like it’s already here.
According to an interview that happened three days before the tornado killed more than 20 people in Mississippi, the data has convinced him that we are in the midst of an experiment. The longer term is happening right now.
Ashley and others said although the Mississippi tornado fits the projected pattern, it was a single weather event, which is different than climate projections over many years and a large area.
A professor from Northern Illinois University, a tornado expert and the study’s co-author said they are keeping an eye on the weather on Friday.
Forecasting tornados in future climate simulations is not possible because the global computer models can’t see them. Two years of simulations and crunching data is what Gensini and Ashley spent on when they used smaller regional computer models.
Three scientists not connected to the study said it makes sense. Paul Markowski, a tornado scientist at Pennsylvania State University, said it’s a promising advancement because it explicitly simulations storms, instead of only looking at general environments favorable to supercells.
Because February and March are getting warmer than they used to be this will happen earlier in the year, but by July and August the cap of hot dry air is so strong that supercells have a hard time forming, Ashley and Gensini said.
In the mid-South, including Rolling Fork, the study projects supercell activity peaking two hours later, from 6 to 9 p.m. instead of 4 to 7 p.m. That means more nighttime supercells.
Gensini said, “create asupercell at night where you can’t go outside and see the threat, so people don’t take it seriously.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/28/1166422313/warming-fueled-supercells-will-hit-the-southern-u-s-more-often-a-study-warns
The Cap of the Great Plains: Putting a Pair of Dice in a “Dice against a Powerful” Weather Front
The hot dry air from New Mexico puts a strong “Cap” on where storms would normally brew when the air mass collides. In the Great Plains storms can boil over a bit more. The pressure builds as the weather front moves east, leading to supercells forming later and farther eastward, Gensini and Ashley said.
It’s like putting a pair of dice against you. One of those dice is making the odds worse because of more people in the way and the other one is loaded with more supercells “increasing the odds of the perils too, tornadoes and hail.”
