Drought and dry lines with global warming

[calvinkaskey]

I'm curious how important dry lines are as compared to upper level winds and if we are seeing them in areas further to the east.

 

[Justin Wilcox]

Man good point. In fact, Marcus Diaz was going on about the same exact thing last night! Coincidence?... I think not.

 

[Bob Hartig]

Once those three thousand-foot-tall tornado walls are built across the Great Plains, then all the action will get shunted eastward, dryline or no dryline.

In my part of the country, a dryline is rarely a factor. However, on rare occasions, we do get one, and the phenomenon has been associated with major tornado events. The 1965 Palm Sunday tornadoes featured what Ted Fujita referred to as a "dry cold front," and West Michigan's only F5 tornado in 1956 was associated with a dryline. But while dry air from the desert southwest is involved, I'm not sure it can be considered the dryline by the time it gets this far east. That feature mixes eastward during the day and then retreats back to the west in the evening as daytime heating diminishes.

 

[Adam Lucio]

A dryline is just another boundary that can induce lift. It means nothing without upper level support. Important yes, but I think having the right support matters more.

 

[Chris Nuttall]

Drylines rarely make it to the Mississippi River. The usual eastward extent that I've observed has been roughly along a line from Kansas City-Fort Smith-Shreveport. You're getting pretty far away for the dry downsloped air from the Rockies to make it eastward. Also, the Pacific cold fronts tend to overtake the dryline by then. I think the long-term drought over the High Plains has definitely led to more cases of the dryline mixing farther east out of Western Kansas, OK/TX Panhandles, and West Texas more rapidly.