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.
”””John F. Hultquist (22:21:28) : 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, . . ””””
John,
In my teens [~50 yrs ago] I stumbled on a book in my school library called “The Book of the Damned” by Charles Henry Fort. The theme was facts that established science “damned”. It goes into many instances of raining down things both living and inorganic. Also, it goes into things seen passing in front of the full moon or the sun, etc, etc. There is some info about online. Just Bing/Google it.
John
Indur M. Goklany (19:44:04) :
That’s great news, Indur!
(Not because i love it when AGW’s promises crumble but because every life saved is great news.)
“rbateman (19:47:53) :
Big cyclone hit Portugal to France, made for wind damage all the way into Germany, shutting down airports and trains. How often does Europe get these cyclones?”
In Germany we have storms like this regularly, mostly in spring and in autumn. Looks like the french had bad luck with a couple of broken dykes and severe flooding and 50 or so dead at La Rochelle, thousands had to climb on the roofs of their houses.
So, it was a pretty bad storm but nothing unprecedented.
..but be careful not to repeat the Al-armist’s misstake to interpret every least sign in their favour. Sensible people await a clear trend before drawing conclusions, don’t they?
John Whitman (21:04:12) :
I’ve always said that the best food in the world is in Taipei. There used to be a “dumpling” restaurant up on Chung Shan North Road, Section 3 – too much to hope it would still be there…. and just around the corner Uncle Tony Grueneger ran a Swiss restaurant…. every kind of schitznel you could imagine. The Cottinghams had the Ploughman Pub two blocks over from the President Hotel… and the Taiwan Users Group met upstairs at the American Legion in Shih-lin…. We created the computer revolution, right there….
Count your blessings.
According to Joe Bastardi, 2010 will be a hefty Tornado season.
In this video he tells you why!
http://www.accuweather.com/video-on-demand.asp?video=68159005001&channel=VBLOG_BASTARDI&title=Nasty%20Hurricane%20Season%20Lurking&ctr=2
Sorry, that was Hurricane Season!
Re. Pamela gray 7. 51
I think a recipe of the day slot, whilst a useful addition to these pages, may be a sign of overconfidence and complacency. Anyway I am a left wing, veggie and I live in the fens(uk). I am a flatearther though. I would be interested in your pickled garlic recipe though:-)
But.. but… storms are supposed to be getting stronger and more frequent because of global warming… BRAD PITT SAID SO!!!!!!!
As I recall, there were a number of fairly short-lived tornado warnings issued across the southern states east of Texas in February. If so, this would indicate that conditions were close to, if not actually productive of, tornados. The absence of tornados may be more a matter of degree than anything, and not really the “big event” that its being hyped up to be.
In my neck of the frozen north, we had a September a few years ago with absolutely no rain – not a drop, unheard of – one of the nicest months I can ever recall. Oddly, the sun still came up Oct. 1.
“What does it tell us about long-term trends? Again, essentially nothing.”
________________________
So true!
There is one ‘long term trend’ that I have a problem getting my mind off of. Not that I’m ‘worried’ you understand; I firmly believe I’ll be nothing but dust before it ever arrives. But all this talk of ‘weather’ and ‘climate’ keeps this ‘trend’ in the front of my head – for some strange reason. I guess that’s why I keep poking my nose in at WUWT – to see if I can see this special ‘trend’ or here more about it (by some miracle).
They say a pic is worth a thousand words. Here’s what I talking about, doesn’t it look like a ‘long term trend’ to you?
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/8615/allpaleotemp.png
Hmm. . . Strike-through of ‘has’ didn’t work. Not ‘s’ in angled brackets?
One of Gore’s early propaganda efforts was a book by AGW promoter Bob Reiss, called ‘The Coming Storm’. Gore wrote the forward to the book, calling it a great example of what is coming towards us if we do not regulate CO2.
The book opens with a vignette of a tornado that kills a promising college student, in a city that gets occasional tornadoes, but Reiss asserts that the killer tornado is actually AGW caused, and we will see even more…..soon. The book was published in 2001.
Reiss promises us that we are already experiencing ‘extreme weather’ and it will only get worse.
And who is it who confuses weather with climate?
Our AGW believer friends.
And who calls every weather event as *proof* of their point of view?
Our AGW friends.
Kerry you are not educated very well.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/07/kerry-blames-tornado-outbreak-on-global-warming/
We only have a few decades of satellite data and they even miss tornadoes. We have 1 half century of teevee reporters and before then they have nothing. It doesn’t mean anything other than we haven’t had one reported.
On the otherhand, it takes heat and lift to create one.
Mind if you keep things more private?
Some of us lost our crops last summer due to frost caused by warming.
Kinda like the potatoe famine.
The libs really also have issues with placing Bambi on the dining table.
Here’s the link on amazon to his collected works; used copies start at $2. It’s better to start with his 3rd and 4th books, e.g., “Lo!”:
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Damned-Collected-Works-Charles/dp/1585426415/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267538827&sr=1-1
B H Obama referred to the Tornado from Greensburg Kansas as having killed 10,000 people. The population was under 2,000 and the actual deaths were 11 or 12.
“In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed,” the Democratic presidential candidate said Tuesday in a speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering Richmond art studio for a fundraiser.
Weather can be lied about for political purposes.
Does this put the lefty lying about a political agenda tied to global warming into pwerspective?
Brian G Valentine (20:40:21) :
This is consistent with NAO interaction with PDO to bring colder North American temperatures.
Except that the PDO is practically neutral right now. Now maybe that’s enough, along with a strongly negative AO, to create a loopy jet stream bringing masses of cold continental polar air into the deep south. Then, couple that with El Nino and above average precipitation and you get … record snows. And while I know you can get tornadoes in winter — from personal experience, I live in Arkansas — that only happens in a mild winter. This has been a hard winter in the south, and midwest, i.e. all throughout “tornado alley” and it has lingered on.
I agree with you, that the lack of tornadoes is consistent with the weather patterns we’re seeing, but just question what role the PDO is having seeing as it has gone neutral coincident with current El Nino. If we’re still in a “negative” phase of the PDO, I suppose that means that the PDO didn’t go strongly positive.
Recent values of the PDO:
2009** -1.40 -1.55 -1.59 -1.65 -0.88 -0.31 -0.53 0.09 0.52 0.27 -0.40 0.08
2010** 0.83
If that last value doesn’t retreat in the next few months, we’re going to hear a lot about it, i.e. what happened to the 30 year phases of the PDO?
Sorry. My bad. It’s just that every time I read a post about “..tornado…”, my brain read “…tomato…”. So off I went to the kitchen. And yes, a somewhat zesty, less fruity red wine would work very well. Now back to tom…tornadoes.
Quote: “ABSTRACT
Proponents of drastic greenhouse gas controls claim that human greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming, which then exacerbates the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including extreme heat, droughts, floods, and storms such as hurricanes and cyclones. In fact, even though reporting of such events is more complete than in the past, morbidity and mortality attributed to them has declined globally by 93%–98% since the 1920s.”
How can a 0.2091% (at most) global temperature increase on the Kelvin temperature scale within the past century “exacerbate the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events”, at least to the extent that it can be documented as a causation? The math says it’s a statistically insignificant temperature increase and a statistically insignificant thermal energy increase, thus these claims are rubbish. While a decline in morbidity and mortality attributed to extreme weather events is a minor (and loosely correlated) contraindication to this claim by AGW proponents, the majority of the reduction is most likely due to improvements in weather forecasts, watches, warnings, advance evacuations, states of emergency, more stringent building codes, localized geoengineering, technological advancements, faster and more intense emergency response, etc. Why did the Abstract even mention global warming? Certainly not to argue that the reduction in deaths and injuries due to extreme weather means less extreme weather since the 1920’s, but rather to point out the degree of alarmism practiced by the AGW proponents.
Just to reiterate:
“There were no tornadoes reported in the United States in February 2010. ”
[Emphasis Mine].
While this isn’t a slander against the tornado reporting mechanisms, it’s important to realize, as with other natural events, and particularly with comparing these events to historical data, that there are fewer and less accurate events than there are today.
Likewise, future events will be more numerous than that of today simply through better observation.
Although hurricane Katrina was tragic, it was not really spectacular or more severe than any other hurricane, except in the perfect formation. The evidence of hurricane and tornado effects are extremely short lived – except when people have some investment where they fall.
@Henry chance (06:28:52) :
“B H Obama referred to the Tornado from Greensburg Kansas as having killed 10,000 people. The population was under 2,000 and the actual deaths were 11 or 12.”
Yes Henry, the AGW “big lie” has to be repeated often and in many flavors.
BHO making things up? Who would have guessed!
Is this consistent with a Dalton/Maunder like minimum, where decreased electromagnetic atmosphere activity is expected?
I don’t think we can say this enough, “Anthropogenic Global Warming” is man made global warming. Some might say Mannmade, or Goremade, but the bottom line is that it really is man made. It’s time to STOP denying the obvious! It is, was, (will be?) the biggest, civilization crushing, money grabbing trick of all time. And it was just a man made hoax.
PS: Have you noticed: there’s so much more in a name these days. Linda ‘Tripp’, Al ‘Gore’. I’m not sure what the Indian meaning is for Rajendra ‘Pachauri’ is, but I have a feeling it’s real bad.
According to “scientists” there will be alergyc storms instead:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20100301/hl_hsn/globalwarmingkicksupallergystorm