Jun 18, 2023 03:30 AM
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230...s-changing
EXCERPTS: . . . Tornado alley is not a scientific term – it was invented by two meteorologists from the US Air Force in the 1950s to refer to severe weather around Texas and Oklahoma. The region's exact horizons are highly variable, with some maps suggesting it stretches as far north as the Dakotas and as far south as Illinois and Indiana. However, it is usually broadly synonymous with the Great Plains, and typically includes states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Kansas.
[...] Last year, scientists from the City University of New York announced an unexpected development. Tornado alley, with its dubious geographical perimeter, has been migrating. Between the 1950s and the 1980s, the corridor's classically accepted boundaries were broadly respected by these weather events. But in the last three decades the country has been experiencing a radical shift, the researchers found, with a higher frequency hundreds of miles away, in the southeast and "Dixie Alley" – a region of the southern US with a history of particularly violent tornadoes.
Today it's thought that tornadoes may be occurring less often in the Great Plains, according to another paper. At the same time, large tornado outbreaks have become most common in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
It's not clear why this transition to the southeast has occurred.... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . Tornado alley is not a scientific term – it was invented by two meteorologists from the US Air Force in the 1950s to refer to severe weather around Texas and Oklahoma. The region's exact horizons are highly variable, with some maps suggesting it stretches as far north as the Dakotas and as far south as Illinois and Indiana. However, it is usually broadly synonymous with the Great Plains, and typically includes states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Kansas.
[...] Last year, scientists from the City University of New York announced an unexpected development. Tornado alley, with its dubious geographical perimeter, has been migrating. Between the 1950s and the 1980s, the corridor's classically accepted boundaries were broadly respected by these weather events. But in the last three decades the country has been experiencing a radical shift, the researchers found, with a higher frequency hundreds of miles away, in the southeast and "Dixie Alley" – a region of the southern US with a history of particularly violent tornadoes.
Today it's thought that tornadoes may be occurring less often in the Great Plains, according to another paper. At the same time, large tornado outbreaks have become most common in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
It's not clear why this transition to the southeast has occurred.... (MORE - missing details)