We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
On the Significance of Multiple Consecutive Days of Tornado Activity.
- Authors
Trapp, Robert J.
- Abstract
Motivated by the temporal behavior of recent high-end tornado events, a 30-yr historical record of tornadoes in the United States is examined for multiple-day periods of tornado activity. Comprising the 3129 tornado days during 1983-2012 are 1406 unique, nonoverlapping periods. Only 24% of these periods have lengths of 3 or more days. However, the conditional probability of such a multiday period given an outbreak day (OB; one with 20 or more tornado reports) is 74%, and given a significant tornado day [SIGTOR; one rated Fujita/enhanced Fujita (F/EF) ≥ 3] is 60%. Alternative ways of expressing these conditional probabilities all lead to the conclusion that SIGTORs and/or OBs are more likely to be contained within multiday periods of tornadoes than within 1-2-day periods. Two additional conclusions are offered: 1) SIGTORs and OBs have a relatively higher likelihood of occurrence during the latter half of the multiday periods, and 2) multiday periods have a relatively higher likelihood of occurrence during the warm months of April-July. A hypothesized connection, illustrated using reanalysis data from 2013, is proposed between such behaviors and the characteristics of the larger-scale meteorological forcing. Some speculations are made about possible relationships between multiday periods of tornado activity and convective feedbacks, extended predictability, and modes of internal climate variability.
- Subjects
JOPLIN (Mo.); ALABAMA; STORMS; FUJITA Scale; MOORE Tornado, Okla., 2013; JOPLIN Tornado, Missouri, 2011
- Publication
Monthly Weather Review, 2014, Vol 142, Issue 4, p1452
- ISSN
0027-0644
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1175/MWR-D-13-00347.1