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97 weather stations in Ark., Ala., Tenn., Ky. broke or tied temp records
WASHINGTON - All the right ingredients combined for Tuesday's killer tornadoes, especially warm moist air and a shifting weather pattern courtesy of the La Niña phenomenon. Just one thing was off: The calendar.
The Feb. 5 killer tornadoes — at least the 15th deadliest U.S. outbreak on record — had all the earmarks of a batch of twisters usually seen in March, said several meteorologists.
It was farther north than most February tornadoes and stronger, said Joseph Schaefer, director of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
Tornadoes do happen in February, but a study by Schaefer two years ago found that winter tornadoes in parts of the South occur more frequently and are stronger when there is a La Niña, a cooling of Pacific waters that is the flip side of the better known El Nino. In 1971, a deadlier February outbreak in the Mississippi Delta killed 121 people.
But Tuesday's weather violence, which killed at least 50 people, was noteworthy. February tornadoes usually pop up near the Gulf Coast, not in Kentucky or Tennessee, said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Howard Bluestein.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23048491/
WASHINGTON - All the right ingredients combined for Tuesday's killer tornadoes, especially warm moist air and a shifting weather pattern courtesy of the La Niña phenomenon. Just one thing was off: The calendar.
The Feb. 5 killer tornadoes — at least the 15th deadliest U.S. outbreak on record — had all the earmarks of a batch of twisters usually seen in March, said several meteorologists.
It was farther north than most February tornadoes and stronger, said Joseph Schaefer, director of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
Tornadoes do happen in February, but a study by Schaefer two years ago found that winter tornadoes in parts of the South occur more frequently and are stronger when there is a La Niña, a cooling of Pacific waters that is the flip side of the better known El Nino. In 1971, a deadlier February outbreak in the Mississippi Delta killed 121 people.
But Tuesday's weather violence, which killed at least 50 people, was noteworthy. February tornadoes usually pop up near the Gulf Coast, not in Kentucky or Tennessee, said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Howard Bluestein.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23048491/
