2008 twisters on record-setting path
Pastor Dale Morgan
2008 twisters on record-setting path
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On average, there have been eight deaths per 100 twisters from Jan. 1 to
May 31 in the years 1997 through 2007, according to the National Weather
Service.
By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY
The 2008 tornado season has been the second most lethal since
record-keeping became more reliable 11 years ago, according to National
Weather Service data.
There have been 14 deaths per 100 tornadoes so far this year, second
only to 1998, which saw a fatality rate of 18 deaths per 100 tornadoes
through the same period.
On average, there have been eight deaths per 100 twisters from Jan. 1 to
May 31 in the years 1997 through 2007, according to numbers provided by
the National Weather Service and analyzed by USA TODAY.
"The tornadoes have been stronger," says Greg Forbes, a severe-weather
expert at The Weather Channel. "We've had a lot of strong, wide,
long-track tornadoes. There's been lots of opportunities for them to hit
people in their path."
Forbes says more of these intense tornadoes have occurred east of the
flat and sparsely populated "Tornado Alley" states. They include Texas,
Oklahoma, Kansas, eastern Colorado, Nebraska and South Dakota. This
year's batch has often hit east of the Mississippi, where more wooded
and rolling terrain and hazier skies offer less warning time in more
densely populated areas.
Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee have each averaged 88.5
twisters this year compared with an average of 41.8 in each of the
Tornado Alley states.
Greg Carbin, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service's Storm
Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., estimates that about 800 of the
1,191 tornadoes reported this year were unique events. Before 1997, a
lot of lesser tornadoes and tornadoes that didn't hit structures were
not reported, so those totals are less reliable, Carbin says.
Forbes says the USA's geography, with a cool jet stream flowing east out
of the Rocky Mountains and warm, moist air rushing north from the Gulf
of Mexico, creates more large, twisting thunderstorms that spawn
tornadoes than anywhere else in the world. This year, warmer-than-usual
Gulf temperatures and a colder-than-normal winter in the West made
matters worse. When temperatures warm earlier, tornadoes occur earlier,
he says. February, for example, was the largest tornado outbreak on
record, with at least 79 tornadoes hitting 10 states.
Typically, May has the most tornadoes, followed by June, and fewer
people are killed by tornadoes in the year's latter half.
The conditions that led to the devastating storms thus far this year are
likely to give way to shorter and more sporadic events, Carbin says.
Whether that means fewer deaths is hard to say.
"We've seen fatalities into December," Carbin says. "So I hate to say
that the worst is over."