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Short Stuff: Tornado Alley · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know Short Stuff.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: That's right, we're talking about tornadoes again on the show.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: We've talked plenty about tornadoes and Tornado Alley even but
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: we're gonna talk more about it because probably since we
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: did the last update on Tornado Alley, it seems like
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: it might be changing.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: A bit, right, Yeah, definitely for sure, and just even
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: classifying tornadoes. I'm sure we talked about the changeover because
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: it would have happened before we talked about it, but
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: it would have been really new. So yeah, there's a
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: lot to dig into about Tornado Alley and tornadoes. One
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: of the first things to understand is that Tornado Alley
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: is a contested area of the United States of North America,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: but the United States in particular that runs essentially from Texas.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Why are you laughing at me? Just runs?
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I love it to bear with this. When you dig
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: yourself into a word hole then climb back out.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Of it, well watch this, I'm climbing up. It starts
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: in Texas, it goes all the way up to the Dakotas,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: but it also veers over, it bends and hits like Iowa, Indiana, Ohio.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: And this the reason this is considered tornado Alley is
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: because it has the most tornadoes of anywhere else in
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the United States, which means that it has more tornadoes
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: than anywhere else in the world. And the reason that
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: is is because it has the perfect conditions for tornadoes
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: to develop.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: All Right, So tornado producing conditions that you mentioned are
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: they form through instability in the atmosphere. So a lot
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: of moist, warm air beneath that cooler, dryer air, and
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: then something called wind sheer. It's just when winds are
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: changing with height, like the winds are changing and then
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: they're changing at different height levels. And if you've got that,
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: then you've got a pretty good recipe for a tornado.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: And it just so happens that those states that you
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: mentioned have a lot of that kind of weather happening
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: thanks to where they are.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, so warm moist air comes up from the
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico and cooler, dryer air comes from the west,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: like say the Rockies, and they converge in that area
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  Speaker 1: that's Tornado Alley. And when you've got those two factors,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: like you said, the wind shear and the instability, supercell
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: thunderstorms can break out and that's what spawned tornadoes. And
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: so anywhere you find that where there's instability and wind shear,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: a tornado can break out. And they do break out
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: outside a tornado alley all the time, bad ones, yeah,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: for sure. And yeah, it's not even North America. There's
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: a long standing myth that we probably talked about about
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: whether there's tornadoes outside of North America, and there are,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: but it's just that there's so many more in North America.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: You can forgive people for thinking they're just a North
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: American phenomenon.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Then yeah, And the other thing too, is in the
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: areas that you described as tornado alley, at least a
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: lot of them have these big, wide open planes, and
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: that's just kind of become the common thing you think
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: about is a tornado that you see way far off
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: in the distance coming at you. And that's not always
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: the case when they happen here in the American South,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: which you know, we'll get to the fact that that
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: happens a lot more lately, there are a lot more trees,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: dense forests, it's not these big, wide open planes. So
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: it's just not what you typically think of as tornado country,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: even though they will rip through Georgia or Alabama or
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Tennessee just as well as they can anywhere else.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, and then we should also say that tornado alley
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: is a fairly recent term. It was coined in nineteen
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: fifty two by a pair of Air Force weathercasters, Major
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Ernest J. Faubush great name agreed, and Captain Robert C. Miller.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: And they I saw that their method of predicting tornadoes
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: was like ninety five percent accurate or something insane likely whoa.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: But so the coin tornado alley at about the same
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: time the records of tracking tornadoes begin, because in the
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: United States, our records are tornado activity records only date
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: back to the fifties.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the nineteen fifties. In fact, it was I guess
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: just before we started the podcast in two thousand and
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: seven that they and I guess I remember talking about
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: this being sort of a new thing at the time.
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  Speaker 2: Like you said, the Enhanced Fujiita Scale or the EF
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: scale for rating a tornadoes intensity or their damage intensity.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: So that hasn't even been around that long. But you
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: know how it generally worked was if you're going to
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: count tornadoes, you're literally gonna do that. You're gonna have
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: people calling in to the Weather Service. You're going to
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: have just regular citizens. You're going to maybe people in
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: the government or meteorologists weighing in, but people reporting tornadoes
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: to the NWS is how they keep track of how
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: many tornadoes they are.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you just know that the citizens that report tornadoes,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: there's only ten of them, but they're probably responsible for
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: like sixty percent of the tornado reports.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're into it.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, good for them. So you don't just take
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: those ten people's word for it. Like you mark where
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: they're saying they saw a tornado, and then you send
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: out train meteorologists to go check afterwards, see what kind of.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Structure was there.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly put their hand on a railroad track and they
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: look at the destruction and based on the level of destruction,
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  Speaker 1: they categorize it with that enhance Fujiita scale, and that
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: ultimately what they're after is classifying it based on presumed
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: or estimated wind speeds hence the destructiveness of the whole thing,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: and then they count it. And that's how they track tornadoes.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: And because it's only in only days back to the fifties,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: and it's still kind of a cluegye way of tracking tornadoes.
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  Speaker 1: We're not very good at looking at long term trends
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  Speaker 1: in tornado activity. We're not there yet, so we're kind
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: of reading tea leaves as it were.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: All Right, uh now I want to go have some tea,
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: So let's take a break. Okay, and we'll be right back.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: Okay, definitely should now dumb now large oils of Ryan.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Sk Okay, chuck the lake. We said, you can have
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: a tornado outside of Tornado Alley. Sorry, everybody. They just
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: happened there with more frequency. There's also plenty of less
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: powerful tornadoes too that happened in Tornado Alley. But they're
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: also they seem to be also popping up in the
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: southern southeastern US with much greater frequency and much more
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: destructiveness than it seems like there used to be. And
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: that's actually a point of contention. Not everybody agrees with that,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: but they're there's a thought that there's a school of
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: thought that Tornado Alley's migrating east toward.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're calling this new new Tornado Alley Dixie Alley.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Some people are calling it that. Other people are saying like, no,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: that's not even a thing. And again, these are the
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: ones that are going maybe through a forest or something,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: or in the case of Atlanta, that one year like
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: in the city of Atlanta, which is very scary and weird.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: But there's not really a tornado season like you think
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: of in traditional tornado alley. They can they can pop
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: up whenever. I think it's more likely here in the
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: South to have a tornado in late winter to early spring,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: and in the northern plains it's usually summertime. But all
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: you need and these are what the meteorologists in tornado
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: people try to hammer home. It's like, yeah, maybe there's
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: a tornado season, you know, quote unquote season, but like
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: it's an atmospheric condition and that can happen at any
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: time in any place really as long as those conditions are.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Met right exactly. So like you said, so people are
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: just like, no, that's not actually a thing. It's not
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: really moving. The reason that a lot of people say
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: it's moving is because the climate change. It just makes
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: sense right that as the earth warms, if you need warmer,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: humid air underneath colder air to create instability and wind cheer. Well,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: then is the earth warms, you're going to have more
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: warmer humid air, and so yes, if so facto, tornadoes
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  Speaker 1: are going to be breaking out much worse than they
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: were before, much greater frequency, and probably in places that
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: you know, you might as well say tornado alleys expanded. Right,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: other people are like, not so fast, their buster, because yes,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: there probably will be warmer, more warm, humid air, but
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: because the Earth's warming, that also means there will probably
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: be less cooler, drier air. Right, So you'll have one
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: of the ingredients, but you'll have less of the other ingredient,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: so you'll have less wind cheer, which means that. But
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it might be a wash. And at
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the very least, we can't really predict at this point
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: how climate change is going to affect tornadoes. So sit down,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I think, guess what the other scientists are saying.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of hard to believe after all this
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: time that this is as far along as we are
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: with tornadoes, And I don't know, it just seems like
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: something that you could almost predict it at a certain point.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because we've been tracking them for a while. This
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  Speaker 1: how stuff works article that we're basing this on mentions
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: what probably the very first report by a European of
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  Speaker 1: a tornado in what would become the United States was
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: by Governor John Winthrop, one of the Puritans. If you
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: remember our Puritan episode, Oh yeah, yeah, I'm back in
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: sixteen forty three. He recorded a powerful wind that whipped
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: up dust, lifted his meeting house that's probably the big giveaway,
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  Speaker 1: and knock down a tree that fell on some poor
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: schmo who was killed by it.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: Geez.
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  Speaker 2: So he said in his logbook tornadoes not so pure
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: exactly or very pure, depending on how you look at it.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: I guess yeah, now that you mentioned it, you probably
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: saw them as God's wrath for sure. Do you have
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: anything else?
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we should mention the movie Twisters, because that is
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: a I guess, I don't know what they call him
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: these days, but not a remake of the original Twister movie.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: But it has long been known that Emily, my wife,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: loves the movie Twister, the first one one of her
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: guilty indulgences, because otherwise she just basically likes independent film
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: and foreign film and Twister, and that's always sort of
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: been the joke in the family. But she was very
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: excited to watch Twisters. We rented it the other night
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: here at the house. The three of us watched it,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: and Twisters gets three big old thumbs down from Oh
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: that's a shame, just not very good unfortunately.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Well, it's a.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Tough act to follow. I mean the first first one
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: was pretty great.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the cast alone, Philip Seymour Hoffman and
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Bill Paxton and Helen Han it was great. Carry ol wise,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: really just a top notch movie and holds up. So
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: I say, don't waste your time with Twisters. Okay, And
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: I hope no one that made that movie or was
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: in that movie listens to the show because they're all great. Otherwise,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: good for.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: You, man. Chuck was very nice at the end there,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: So of course that means short stuff is out.
• 11:31
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• 11:34
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• 11:38
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