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.
When people stoop to such arguments as “more snow is consistent with what Climate Science tells us about AGW, then they have really shot themselves in the head.
They could equally have said, “well, AGW theory probably isn’t PERFECT” or something – instead, they have to act like Junior High kids caught in a lie – make up a preposterous story to cover their own lies, and be stupid enough to think that people will believe them.
But, what you didn’t know is, Global Warming causes low tornado output. Well, when there is more moisture in the atmosphere(caused by Global Warming), there are bigger storms spread out over a larger area. Less moisture allows smaller storms in smaller areas to concentrate enough to produce a tornado. I base this robust scientific conclusion on NOTHING! But most scientists agree.
This is MSN news, have a good night and see you tomorrow sheeple.
JonesII (07:23:56) wrote: “Is this consistent with a Dalton/Maunder like minimum, where decreased electromagnetic atmosphere activity is expected?”
I don’t know if it is, but the idea would be interesting to investigate because there is scientific evidence that tornadoes are an “electromagnetic atmosphere activity”.
If true, it would mean with a solar minimum, and, particularly a prolonged solar minimum, there would possibly be a trend toward less “electromagnetic atmosphere activity”, including less tornadoes.
O/T but not too..
Scientists worldwide since the dawn of the Age of Reason, and even some ‘scientists’ of low morals and integrity, have wondered about the Earth’s Tilt and the change of location of the Earth’s magnetic poles and Ice Ages and weather changes, etc., etc.. Today, thanks to NASA, they have an answer to many of their questions. Major Earthquakes do it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aLAUn4Gy92ss
The Earth is 4.6 billion years old and we have actual records for only 0.00000003% of it, the rest being proxies and speculation. When we use the word “ever” for a weather event, we don’t sound serious.
Pascvaks,
(SOUND FX)
Swish! ZZZZZZZ! Splash! bubble, bubble, twang, splashy-splash, scoop, thud flapity-flap.
Put me in the ice chest, you had me hook line and sinker for a moment there. Hadn’t tumbled to that definition of AGW. I like it.
PS Don’t give me to Pamela, she’ll cook me, and serve me probably with a Columbia Valley white wine.
Mike
“If true, it would mean with a solar minimum, and, particularly a prolonged solar minimum, there would possibly be a trend toward less “electromagnetic atmosphere activity”, including less tornadoes.”
Possibly, but I would guess that the EM activity associated with tornadoes is local and not global, as is the EM activity associated with lightning.
OceanTwo (07:02:56) :
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.
My reply;
case in point where it really shows up is in the number of reported earthquakes as the continuous adding of more stations, and more sensitive upgrades to older systems, allows for much more sensitivity, and better coverage of previously “Seismically Quiet areas” due to complete lack of coverage 60 to100 years ago.
In the case with tornado reporting in the beginning from 1950 to 1955, they pulled records of reports of property damage, deaths or injury, that resulted in the generation of either a newspaper story, or insurance claim from which they pulled the first 5 years of records, before they started a network of reporting services, using police and highway patrol officers as valid reporters.
County ag extension agents and sheriff deputies were added in some states, before they got a full fledged reporting system rolling by 1957. With the storm spotter program more real people viewers were added continually as they were recruited and trained, then when the Nexrad Doppler radar systems, came on line they were able to detect “potential circulation” patterns to be investigated from the ground, and many short term funnels were seen dropping from clouds for very short periods of time, greatly increasing numbers reported.
So yes it is judicious to sort the reported total numbers, for production of f2+ storms, to be comparable to the past reported storm levels.
There is a lot of data in the research that shows electrical activity is involved in most tornadoes, that were well studied, but it is hard to be in the right place at the right time to see something that lasts for less than a hour most of the time.
For the details of the ground floor action check this link;
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/vortex2/
””Robert E. Phelan on March 2, 2010 at 1:21 am: 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….””
Pamela, see what you started ..
Robert,
I am guessing, sounds like you were in Taipei sometime between the late ’70s to the mid ’80s or so. That was the period of one of my stays in Taipei. So if you were there when I was then I probably saw you at Ploughmans, or America Legion or the Tien Mou Mongolian Barbeque or at Mary’s Hamburger or in sugardaddy alley somewhere (wife hates the alley so my times there were extremely brief). For Swiss/German food I used to go the Zum Fass, is that the place you were talking about? Did you spend any quality time in snake alley? I can update you on the status of all those old places. NOTE: I had dinner last week in the restaurant that now is where Ploughmans used to be.
John
Odd, I remember some waterspouts being spotted off the California coast this winter. Maybe I’m thinking of a different month.
Pascvaks (05:01:46) :
“What does it tell us about long-term trends? Again, essentially nothing.”
Correct. Because hurricanes are produced by non-linear process, trends have no significance. They are the result of processes driven by deterministic chaos and their turbulent progression tends to reduce the amount of energy in our climate system. These major weather features can produce significant longer-term effects. An explanation for the electrical effects often observed in hurricanes would help our understanding of these high energy systems.
Just wait for it: From Algore “FACT: Global Warming causes less tornadoes”
Re: Andy Scrase (21:19:30) :
It was not intended to be “funny”. Apologies if the “?!” punctuation gave the wrong impression.
My winter forecast as of 14 December 2009, let me know how it came out?
Note towards the bottom my forecast for the first outbreak in 2010 to be in March around the 22nd.
#
My 2009 – 2010 Winter out look
One of the problems with the current models is the reference time frame is very narrow for initial conditions, and changes with in the past three days, a lot of times, will introduce presistance of inertia, to the medial flows, for several days, consistent with the actual flows, as the Lunar declinational atmospheric tides, make their runs across the equator from one poleward culmination to another.
Then as the tide turns and we have the severe weather bursts at declinational culmination, they get confused, or surprised, as the initial inertial effects reverse for about four days before the sweep to the other pole, that brings back the smooth flows, the models understand.
So that when the Lunar declination went to Maximum North on December 3rd, turbulence and shear introduced into the atmosphere, from the turning tide, (the models do not know about), surprised them with the usual couple of tornadoes. Now (12-13-09) that we are ~20 degrees South Lunar declination, the models have a full buffer, of five days of linear inertial movement, from the Moon’s trip South across the equator (12-09-09) and is slowing it’s movement.
Coming up on the Southern extent culmination, producing a secondary tidal bulge in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing us to the mid point of a 27.32 day declinational cycle (one of the four routine patterns that cycle on an 109.3 day period). This particular one (#1) that started back on Dec 3rd, has incursions of polar air masses that come down from Western Canada, through Montana and the Dakotas, to make up the Northern part of the atmospheric tidal bulge.
So I would expect to see a large invasion of cold dry air sweep almost all the way to the Gulf coast again, then the produced frontal boundary with the interesting weather, that includes change state intense precipitation. Freezing rain, where the warm over runs cold, and snow where the cold undercuts the more sluggish warm air, still moving North East by inertia alone, severe weather to form in that trailing edge of the warm moist mass, that gets over taken from behind by the polar air mass that tries to follow the tidal bulge back to the equator, which for the next 4 of 5 days powers up the cyclonic patterns generated by carolis forces, and finishes out as the Moon approaches the equator again.
Expect the same type of interaction again for a primary bulge production by the passage back North, culminating on 12-30-09, pumping in a solid polar air mass very consistent with the pattern we had on 12-03-09, (the North “lunar declination culmination”)[LDC], then (#2) the next Rossby wave / jet stream regime pattern, comes back into play with much more zonal flow, and air masses invading from the Pacific, (of the two sub types of) phase with lesser amounts of Gulf moisture entrainment in this one, more in the other #4.
The (#3) third 27.32 day pattern with polar air masses invading in from the Minnesota / Great Lakes area and sweeping out through the Eastern sea board, and mostly zonal flow out west, from 01-27-10 till 02-23-10, comes next.
The fourth 27.32 day cycle, that looks very similar to #2 but with much more moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, usually has more hail and tornadoes associated with it than Pattern #4, and typically flows up Eastern side of tornado alley. Will be in effect from 02-23-10 through 03-22-10, and should produce the first big surge of severe tornado production, from about March 20th 2010, until about March 26 or later as the Next polar air mass cycle is coming out of western Canada, and should make for steep temperature gradients, and ion content differences.
Richard Holle
Link to site with the daily maps for the next 4 years.
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
Third attempt, I think I tried to post too long a responce, clipped most of it.
Back on the 14th of December 2009, I posted a spring winter forecast below is an excerpt about the forecast for the spring out break of tornadoes I was expecting then.
Expect the same type of interaction again for a primary bulge production by the passage back North, culminating on 12-30-09, pumping in a solid polar air mass very consistent with the pattern we had on 12-03-09, (the North “lunar declination culmination”)[LDC], then (#2) the next Rossby wave / jet stream regime pattern, comes back into play with much more zonal flow, and air masses invading from the Pacific, (of the two sub types of) phase with lesser amounts of Gulf moisture entrainment in this one, more in the other #4.
The (#3) third 27.32 day pattern with polar air masses invading in from the Minnesota / Great Lakes area and sweeping out through the Eastern sea board, and mostly zonal flow out west, from 01-27-10 till 02-23-10, comes next.
The fourth 27.32 day cycle, that looks very similar to #2 but with much more moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, usually has more hail and tornadoes associated with it than Pattern #4, and typically flows up Eastern side of tornado alley.
Will be in effect from 02-23-10 through 03-22-10, and should produce the first big surge of severe tornado production, from about March 20th 2010, until about March 26
or later as the Next polar air mass cycle is coming out of western Canada, and should make for steep temperature gradients, and ion content differences.
Richard Holle
Link to site with the daily maps for the next 4 years.
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
Can’t those pesky tornados understand that their absence doesn’t fare well for global monetary re-distribution? The very nerve of their air currents…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/7367555/Hurricane-Katrina-victims-to-sue-oil-companies-over-global-warming.html
this law suit could well be the the ‘black swan’ that Gore & Co do not want.
now that their ‘science’ has failed the test, all they have is $$$ powered momentum.
regards