Tornado madness!

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We all know about the insane amount of tornadoes lately. Come here and talk about it.

I have been worried about how many of them keep touching down where my daughter lives. And, tornadoes are just plain scary!

Yep, it's scary alright.

had one sighted near me yesterday. i was surrounded by VERY bad weather yesterday, but nothing in my town...

@simmian7
Glad you weren't hit XD

+1!

It is a combination of factors interacting with the Jet Stream, that is causing all these tornadoes, that said we could also just be noticing the tornados more because they are hitting populated areas whereas before they were hitting out forests instead of populated areas.

I have a aunt who was originally from Carthage MO which is just 17 miles northwest of Joplin MO. She now lives in NJ but she knows the city of Joplin fairly well. It's extremely sad.

As for what causes tornadoes? Well, most destructive tornadoes are spun-up from supercell thunderstorms which are basically large rotating thunderheads. Supercells can be 8-12 miles tall and 10-20 miles wide while a tornado is usually a few hundred yards to half a mile wide. Not all supercells generate tornadoes, but a large number of supercells is the necessary precurser to all bad tornado outbreaks.

The two main ingredients for supercells are high instability ( which means the lower atmosphere is warm and moist while the temperature of layers higher up decreases rapidly with height ) and winds that veer strongly with height (i.e wind shifts from S or SE near ground level to strongly SW or W several thousand feet up.). The instability allows for strong updrafts while the veering wind can cause the updraft to rotate. Strong vertical wind shear also helps "ventilate" supercells once they form by separating the rain from the updraft. That way the storms don't immediately rain themselves out or lose their rotation by transforming into squall lines. Thus vertical wind shear in general is good for the longevity of supercells and the longer a supercell lives the better chance it has of producing a violent tornado.

The exact process by which a tornado might form within a supercell is still a subject of research and debate. Whether the rotation stays high up in the clouds or descends into a violent tornado can be quite random which is hugely disconcerting for meteorologists.

It's theorized the record breaking snow pack in the Rocky Mountains interacting with warm, humid air and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, which is warmer than usual this year, is creating stronger than usual sheer in the upper atmosphere. Add the fact West Texas is experiencing a severe drought, keeping the super cells out of west Texas where they usually are (and western Oklahoma too, for that matter) The larger than life flooding of the Mississippi River and the moisture creates a bit of a micro climate as well. The ingredients are there for a ef4 and ef5 tornadoes east of the Mississippi, where they are not as common, and in western Missouri, because of gulf moisture and the cooler than average temperature in the Rockies.
The tornadoes are bigger this year because there is simply more energy.

There's also been a more concentrated jet stream over the Pacific Ocean due to La Nina conditions. The strongest jet originates off the coast of Asia, but parts of it can break off in what are called Rossby waves. Rossby waves tend to take a turn to the right when they encounter an obstacle like the Rocky mountains. This is what leads to the trough over the rocky mountains.

La Nina could have set all this up and made it possible, but maybe not? It seems like certain areas are actually getting colder, not warmer. The colder areas happen to be north while the warmer ones south, as in waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The strong jet stream has quickly ushered in several low pressure systems which have made it to the east coast creating mayhem along the way. We experienced several of these systems here, but since we were in a drought, we got no rain out of them. April was dry which is unheard of. Usually, it's the rainiest month of all. Not this time.
What we didn't experience here, states like Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Ohio, and Indiana experienced. Intense spring storms, due to access to the moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Without that moisture, it would have been like it was here, windy and storm free with maybe a cloud or two.