February has been an interesting month for weather. It was mostly cold and snow. While Al Gore in his recent NYT op ed and his followers keep warning us of increased severe weather threats, the truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
For the first time ever recorded by NOAA, there has been no tornadoes in February. This news is from the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, the world’s leading experts in tornado research. While it doesn’t tell us anything about the rest of the 2010 season, it is consistent with the lower numbers seen in 2009, which is below the average of recent years.
click for larger image – source: http://www.spc.ncep.noaa.gov/wcm/
For those wanting to examine a climate to tornado connection see: Tornadoes and global warming link – “just not there”
Also of interest is death rates due to severe weather: Going Down: Death Rates Due to Extreme Weather Events
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By Harold Brooks from the NOAA U.S. Severe Weather Blog
There were no tornadoes reported in the United States in February 2010. Assuming that no late reports are received, it will be the first time in the National Weather Service’s database that starts in 1950 that there has been a February without a tornado. If we include Tom Grazulis’s database of F2 and stronger tornadoes, the last time it’s possible there wasn’t a February tornado was 1947. The last tornado reported in the US was on 24 January, in north-central Tennessee. The last calendar month without a tornado was January 2003.
What does this tell us about the rest of the 2010 tornado season? Somewhere between a little and nothing at all. Most years that have started out with few tornadoes have ended up average or below. However, there have been big exceptions. Most notably, in 2003, we started out with no tornadoes in the first 45 days of the year. Even as late as 29 April, it was the slowest start in the database (after adjusting for report inflation, as discussed here.) By the 11th of May, however, 2003 was well above normal following a remarkably active week. So, even though it’s been a slow start to the season, people still need to be aware of the threats that may happen later on.
What does it tell us about long-term trends? Again, essentially nothing. The large-scale atmospheric pattern that persisted over the US for the month of February was unfavorable for tornadoes. There’s nothing in the scientific literature that provides information on any changes to expect with tornadoes in the future, so the no-tornado February can’t be interpreted in that light.
Erratum: “. . . there has been no tornadoes in February.”
Should be: “. . . there HAVE been no tornadoes in February.”
/Mr L
I heard this is just climate chaos and that it’s entirely consistent with what climate models projected.
I then heard my hand slap the guy’s face who said it.
Figuratively speaking of course.
Well sort of.
This is consistent with NAO interaction with PDO to bring colder North American temperatures.
Colder air is far more buoyant (more lift) than warmer air – a fact well known to airplane and helicopter pilots – an airplane uses far less fuel in colder air than warm.
I remember the divorcee and Al Gore escorte Laurie David flying to Oklahoma in the aftermath of a tornado a couple of years ago for no other purpose than to wail in front of a camera, “Is this the world we’re now forced to live in”?
Oh my, I’ve just got to lose 20 pounds… put myself on a grape diet to do it. There’s 11 packages of backstrap venison in the freezer still. Pam’s detailed description of her succulent venison stew is going to make it hard to get any sleep tonight!
so more unfulfilled global warming predictions
”””Pamela Gray (19:51:11) : Interlude: I just wanted to say that the strapback venison stew I just made was heavenly . . . Serve with hot homemade bread.”””
Pamela Gray,
Thanks for the culinary diversion, I can smell it ~8,000 mi. away.
Sounds delicious. What kind of wine, a Petit Shiraz perhaps? Or something more zesty?
NOTE: Around the corner of my apartment building here in Taipei is a wild mountain goat restaurant that has a >24 hr simmered wild goat stew that is very good. I am not kidding [pun only slightly intended]. Of course, wild meat has a more intense flavor that domesticated, the seasons need to be much different.
No grape wine served at the wild goat place, only local beer which is excellent.
Take care.
John
Damnit Pamela!
You just made me drool all over my keyboard!
You are a wicked woman…
Enjoy!
Mike Bentley
The lack of tornadoes shows definite climate change evidence and it is a travesty that it is worse than we thought.
/sarcasm off
Couldn’t resist
Yum, Pamela! So when are you inviting us all up to your place for this strapback venison stew? Lol!
I’ve been too busy ducking snowflakes and staying warm to notice that we had no tornadoes in February. Interesting.
Re: MofM (19:35:44) :
Thanks for the link, MofM, but this is actually not funny at all. If AGW hysteria is driving people to suicide, then alarmists have a lot to answer for.
Of course, there were probably other issues,
the link again is
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/1019108/baby-survives-being-shot-in-suicide-pact
It is noteworthy that “global warming” related catastrophes have become so remote that Laurie David has turned her attention – against “plastics.”
[Now THERE’S something to ponder – Laurie David as “anti-plastic”.]
“the truth is indeed stranger than fiction”
cracked me up Anthony – thanks for the laugh!
It’s clear from that graph that Doc Gore is stuck in 2008 and can’t get out. Someone call Marty McFly.
Pamela, have been on a slow cooker binge lately. Pork roast last night, chicken tomorrow night. hopefully one day, venison!
This innocent child – the victim of psychotic cultism –
Does anyone believe there is all that much difference between some of these global warming and enviro cultists like Paul Ehrlich and Jim Jones?
Do ‘Snownado’s count? I think I saw one in February.
http://www.upwardsoulstice.com/pics/0051.jpg
Nobody knows exactly what triggers and drives a tornado.
The quick answer is that warm fronts and cold fronts collide, but close scrutiny & analysis has led many scientists to admit it’s more complex than that and they don’t have all the answers.
Magnetic flux from the Sun is still at a low ebb, but slightly climbing.
There is scientific evidence that tornadoes have an electrical component.
Possibly, the occurance of tornadoes are dampened by this decrease in magnetic flux from the Sun.
Or maybe it’s just more cold from the North or less warmth upwelling from the South — either way you look at it — another blow against AGW.
Well, to be sure, this ought to make up for the lack of a tornado in the USA:
“Marine life tumbled out of the sky on two occasions last week, raining down on the Northern Territory town of Lajamanu, . . .”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10629376
A local meteorologist said tonight on his forecast that the US is locked into an Omega pattern. Low on the West Coast, High in the Plains and Low on the East Coast. Said it was very stable and won’t want to move.
Forms an Omega with the jet stream arching over the plains.
March comes in like a Lion if he’s correct.
Funny you should post this story now, I just got done plotting Tornado production by lunar declination form the data found for the 1950 through current listing on NOAA’s storm prediction center web pages.
It still shows the patterns I found when I plotted the data from 1950 to 1989, back in 1992. There is a clear signal in the production of large tornado outbreaks around the times, of Maximum North and Maximum South lunar declinational culmination.
With the additional reporting from the improved coverage from Doppler radar, the patterns is a lot fuller now then it was then. Since it is hard to synchronize a 18.6 year signal to full years, I tried using the 19 year period Metonic cycle where the lunar declination and phase occur again on the same date. All though it results in a .4 year slewing of the declinational angle, it still clumps the tornado production together well in short runs of only three or four cycles.
Next I plotted the same data by lunar declination, but in sets of the Saros cycle of the return of the declination and phase every 18 years +~17 days, in sync with the inner planets, so the solar and lunar eclipses repeats, fall on the same days of the pattern. The resultant pattern of tornado production is a much clearer signal with that method of sorting. Indicating that there may be a common influence in the periodicities that include the inner planets.
The Saros cycle repeating pattern seems to have predictive effects highlighting the subject of this entry, a slow period of tornado production this year till the end of March is a probably.
My daughter has finally gotten to the point in her work load, that she will be able to help me add pages to upload this series of data plotting onto my web site this week or next. When I got finished writing the text content to go with the graphs, and saved the file for further editing and thought tweaking, for clarity. I came in here and found this entry, I will let you know when it is posted to site, and ready for viewing.
Anthony I try not to deluge your blog with endless off topic comments on what I am working on, but this seemed to an ok place to add this.
Richard Holle
Apparently there has been a disruption of power over at CCC – Climate Catastrophes Central. Or are they under general orders to make weather conform to the expectations of the cutting edge global warming skeptic?
Furthermore:
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2007/08/storm-frequency.html
Everything possible physical phenomenon is at least “consistent with” or “evidence of” AGW except an infinite string of events that are identical to the past mean of all recorded events.
Which would be damn unnatural in its own right. Like an infinite series of coin flips that alternated between heads and tails with out fail.
If every day for the next ten years exactly matched the average temperature for that date and the average precipitation for that date the warmists would claim that “anomalous weather” would return soon …
…with a “vengeance”.
Global Warming Will Bring Violent Storms And Tornadoes, NASA Predicts
ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2007) — NASA scientists have developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth’s climate warms.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070830105911.htm
Just like global mean temperatures, tornado counts are simply displaying natural variability. How anyone can show man-made CO2 has any measurable impact on these events is beyond anyone who has at least some ability to think. Of course AGW alarmists think we do so they must know soemthing the rest of us don’t but are not willing to show us the evidence, or they are committing fraud. Take your pick.