Tornado Alley Is Shifting

[Randy Zipser]

This lengthy article from Climate Compass appeared on MSN on 2026-04-09, and may be of interest to ST readers. It is about studies suggesting that the location of the traditional Tornado Alley is shifting into the Midwest and Southeast states. Please see the link below:

Tornado Alley is shifting - what it means for Midwestern communities

 

[Jamie H]

Seems quite light on actual data and evidence though, and I couldnt even load their website to see who's behind it.

 

[Dan Robinson]

This is a great map to show when this subject comes up - all tornado tracks in the US from 1950 to 2021:

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/gis/svrgis/images/tornado.png

I know what this article, and many like it, are talking about is the human impacts. And the centroid of those very well could be shifting slightly east. But at least from a storm chasing standpoint, just from my anecdotal experience, the Midwest is a very unreliable and poor producer of quality, photogenic, forecastable tornadoes. I say that as a 16-year resident at this point who moved here specifically to chase Midwest events. It has its moments, sure, just like the Northern Plains does. But still nothing beats the Plains dryline for tornadoes when it comes to chasing.

 

[Luke Penney]

Similar existing threads:
Tornadoes shifting east in the U.S., study finds, putting more people at risk
Tornado alley is expanding — and scientists don’t know why

What articles like this need is a detailed view of data showing change over time (and not pointing out a few years for very streaky events like tornadoes). They do reference larger-scale trends in the data, but I don't see anywhere where I can look into the details. It's certainly plausible, but I'd want to see more evidence. (And a discussion of potential disconfirming factors, like people getting better at identifying the low-visibility tornadoes that happen more outside of traditional Tornado Alley.)
...I guess what I want to read is an academic paper and not a news article.

I think an important detail to note here (and Dan touched on this) is that the kind of tornado/storm makes a big difference to some groups and not others. Dixie Alley gets lots of tornadoes, but those tornadoes have a higher risk of being rain-wrapped, in a squall line, after dark, and/or in bad terrain for chasing. Traditional Tornado Alley has much better conditions for photogenic tornadoes, and its tornadoes are concentrated in a much smaller portion of the year. That makes a big difference to us chasers, but to someone doing housing-damage risk assessments, for example, those factors don't matter.
That's made it so Tornado Alley is still the best chasing, regardless of whether the highest-tornadoes-per-year stat is outside of Kansas and Oklahoma.