M. O’BRIEN: It’s already been a wild season for tornadoes, and it’s kind of early in the tornado season. There may be some factors that are at work here which are making this a particularly difficult tornado season.
Just this past weekend, we told you about 68 tornadoes, 26 tornado fatalities on Sunday. The totals for the year, 355 tornado reports and 38 deaths, and it’s only early April.
So what’s going on? What’s the big picture here?
Meteorologist Dan McCarthy joining us now from the Government Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. Chad Myers in the weather center as well. And we’re going to bat it around here.
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Dan, big picture here, warmer winter in general. Is that kind of the fuel that is causing this right now?
DAN MCCARTHY, NOAA STORM PREDICTION CENTER: I think so. I think when we went through the abnormally warm winter across the south and central plains back into the southwest, that actually extended down into the western parts of the Gulf of Mexico. And when you do that and you don’t get cold fronts that move across the Gulf of Mexico, then the skin temperature of the water does not decrease or does not cool off.
So what we have is a very steamy Gulf of Mexico right now. And when you get a southerly flow into the plains, that brings the dew points and the moisture into that area, and that’s what fuels the thunderstorms.
M. O’BRIEN: OK. So are we seeing something here that might ultimately be linked, big picture, to climate change?
MCCARTHY: I don’t think so. I think what we’re looking at here is something that’s very trendy.
I mean, if you want to go through climate change and things like that, you have to go through a hundred years, at least, of some kind of observation to link that together. Tornadoes are very random. Seasons change as far as tornado season is concerned from year to year.
In 2002, we only had 942 tornadoes. That was the first time we were below a thousand before 1990. And then, when we get to 2004, we had over 1,800 tornadoes, three of them occurring with the hurricane season.
So, I’m not sure there’s a real link yet with global warming, but we do see this trend from time to time.
M. O’BRIEN: Chad?
MYERS: Dan, I’ve got a map behind me. And I’ll show it to the people here.
With this high risk of severe weather in the plains today, moderate risks surrounding it, I was reading some of the words that you put on the graphics today about the potential for severe weather. Three to four-inch hail possible today with some of these more violent thunderstorms, also a large threat of tornadoes today, correct?
MCCARTHY: Yes, it is. And I think when you look at that high and moderate risk, Chad, those are the areas where people need to prepare now.
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