Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Experts push to redefine ‘tornado alley’ region
When one thinks of dangerous weather, “tornado alley” might come to mind — a strip of real estate running from Texas and Oklahoma through Kansas and Nebraska, home to violent twisters that have captivated minds and dominated folklore for decades.
But your greatest risk of being hit by a tornado isn’t actually in tornado alley. Nor are your highest chances of being killed by a twister.
Those infamous titles belong to the Deep South — particularly Mississippi and Alabama, where two tornado outbreaks have occurred in the past two weeks, including Thursday’s killer event.
In fact, the traditionally drawn tornado alley covers only a fraction of the area swarmed by tornadoes each year. Tornado alley doesn’t so much capture where the majority of tornadoes occur as where most storm chasers hunt for them.
Some say it may be time to abandon the concept of tornado alley altogether, or reshape it to reflect our currently understood reality and risk.
“I think [the term] does a disservice to most people,” said Victor Gensini, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Northern Illinois University.
Research has shown that tornadoes are just as common in the Deep South as they are on the Plains, and that there’s no real drop-off as one exits tornado alley to the east.
“If you look at the actual spatial risk of significant tornadoes, there’s no real discontinuity,” said Gensini. The Deep South has the “same climatological frequency … same in the Mid-South as the Plains.”
“To be honest, I hate the term,” Stephen Strader, an atmospheric scientist at Villanova University specializing in severe weather risk mitigation, said in a 2020 interview. “What people need to understand is that if you live east of the continental divide, tornadoes can affect you.”
The term tornado alley first cropped up nearly 70 years ago, when two atmospheric scientists used it as a title for what may have been the first meteorological research project on tornadoes. Air Force officers Ernest Fawbush and Robert Miller were commissioned to attempt severe weather forecasts after March 20, 1948, when a damaging tornado roared through Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City.
The two set to work analyzing surface weather maps and upper air charts in the days that followed, and just five days later raised the alarm that similar atmospheric parameters could again brew severe weather nearby. Preparations were made at the base, and another destructive funnel descended the evening of March 25.
The back-to-back twisters proved the merit of severe weather forecasting, and on Feb. 15, 1952, the two officers began issuing severe weather forecasts between Texas and Nebraska in a project they called “tornado alley.”
Since then it’s become a term popularized by media, describing the swath of the nation’s midsection that hosts barrages of twisters like clockwork every spring. Movies like “The Wizard of Oz, “set in Kansas, are many people’s first introduction to tornadoes.
Tornadoes on the Plains are often elegant and foreboding, some reliably appearing as high-contrast funnels that pose over vacant farmland for hordes of storm chasers and photographers. The Plains are like a giant meteorological classroom, an open laboratory; its students flock to it every year.
That’s why many of the tornadoes seen on television or in print media have the “classic” funnel look; often the most picturesque and widely publicized photos are snapped on the Great Plains each spring.
In the Deep South, including Alabama and Mississippi, most tornadoes are rain-wrapped and shrouded in low clouds, impossible to see. More than a third of all tornadoes in both states occur at night, making them twice as likely to be deadly. Deep South tornadoes are seldom shown on television.
Social scientists fear the constant media bombardment of high-contrast tornado images from the Plains is reinforcing unrealistic expectations that a tornado will be seen before it strikes. In the Deep South, that’s simply not the case in most situations.
“If you’re expecting that, you’re not going to know when one is coming,” said Susan Jasko, a senior researcher at the Center for Advanced Public Safety in Tuscaloosa, Ala.