May 22 2008
Signs of the times
Have you ever heard of a tornado in Denver, Colorado? Me neither…
Update 5/22/08:
Commenter, Pete (Alois), wrote that apparently tornadoes in Eastern Colorado are fairly common. Here’s a fantastic image of a tornado in Eastern Colorado last year.
There have been tornadoes in the Denver metro area before, and they are pretty common in eastern Colorado (actually a favored haunt of storm chasers).
Here’s an image we ran on the blog last year.
Pete,
Wow, really? When I think tornado, I don’t think Colorado. Mostly Kansas and tornado alley. I assumed this was one of those more and more common oddities in modern weather, like the recent tornado in D.C.
Nah–eastern Colorado, being on the east slope of the Rockies, gets a lot of dryline-triggered tornado events (same as the Texas panhandle).
Now you’ve gone and used one of my favorite phrases–”tornado alley.” I say favorite because everyone has a different definition for the term. What’s yours?
My definition of “Tornado Alley” is that region in the middle of the country from northern Mississippi up to the Midwest, westtward into East Texas to the Panhandle up through Oklahoma, and eastward through Alabama.
It’s that whole midsection of America that I call “Tornado Alley”.
Actually, Thomas, your definition is better than most.
My favorite definition: “To a Midwestern chamber of commerce, it’s somewhere else.”
The most technically correct definition probably refers to small areas that are visited repeatedly by tornadoes (the Red River Valley around Wichita Falls, northern Illinois between Chicago and Rockford, northern Mississippi, the Missouri Bootheel and adjacent areas of Arkansas and Tennessee).
And yes, I am a meteorologist who did my major research in tornado climatology, so I’ll leave you alone now. But trying to pinpoint a definition of “tornado alley” was one of the things that always fascinated me, since even though everyone thinks there is one, but in reality there never has been one.
I always did get a kick out of people in places like Mississippi who get riled when news reporters mention that “here in Tornado Alley, nature has wreaked her havoc again” and they protest, “Hey, this is Mississippi, not Kansas!”
You know, Pete, I would’ve never guessed you for a meteorologist
Speaking of tornadoes, one of the things that fascinated me was from a story my teacher told me in third grade (yes, I have a long memory
She said that when she lived in Kansas she saw about a dozen tornadoes drift over her head without touching down in a single day. That image remained salient in my memory since.
Even though East Texas receives its fair share of tornadoes, I haven’t seen or heard of anything else like that before or since.
Oh yeah, I had to ‘fess up because otherwise it looks like I’m obsessed or something (I try to hide my obsession on the blog, but I’m sure it comes through anyway).
You’re in Texas? I thought you were in LA, for some reason.
Even though I’ve seen a fair number of tornadoes, the visual that stays in my mind came from a gal I played in a band with who came from New Jersey. She happened to be in Cleveland on April 3, 1974–the day of the worst tornado outbreak in American history, centered in Ohio. She and a friend were attempting to drive from Cleveland to Cincinnati, and they kept being turned back at roadblocks by law enforcement because “a tornado is on the ground up there.”
Her remembrance of that day? “The sky looked like it was boiling.”
Pete,
I am in LA. I just grew up and have lived most my life in Texas. I still haven’t gotten entirely adjusted to life in Los Angeles yet. To quote a friend of mine, I’m just a “displaced Texan amongst Californicators.”