• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

ENSO and the Winter Tornado Season

Randy Jennings

Supporter
Joined
May 18, 2013
Messages
826
Since it was 104 in Dallas today, I've turned my thoughts to cooler weather. With El Nino expected to be around and even strengthen thru the fall and winter, I found myself starting to get hopeful for a chance to chase this fall or winter. Sure it will not be like the spring, but with that jet likely setting up across the southern US, a chaser in Texas can dream, right? So I started to do some research to see what the data said. There has been a lot of good posts on Stormtrack about ENSO and tornados, but most seem to focus on the spring season. I found a couple of good sources of information I figured I would share. The first covers the entire year: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/enso/. The second is a paper written by Cook and Schaefer called "The Relation of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) to Winter Tornado Outbreaks" at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/publications/cook/enso-mwr.pdf .

The Cook/Schaefer paper is very well written. I encourage you to read it for yourself, but here is a summary: As expected, they conclude that ENSO makes a difference as to where tornados occur during winter. They also note that tornados are more frequent during neutral phases and that stronger long track tornados are statistically more likely to occur during La Nina and neutral winters than in El Nino winters.

The Cook/Schaefer paper concludes with a reminder that ENSO phase by itself can't be used as a tornado forecast tool. They remind us about the March 1998 Minnesota outbreak in a El Nino year when the climatologically preferred area for tornado activity was the Gulf Coast area.
 
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