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.

 

[Mike Smith]

The climate alarmists have been trying to sell this for about a decade.

The more likely response is it is part of Dr. Ted Fujita's "tornado cycle." For details: There Is Nothing New About the Hypothesis Tornado Alley Has Moved East

Let me know if you have questions.

 

[Randy Zipser]

All excellent discussions above.

It would be an interesting project to contrast these findings with the Palmer Drought Index trends over similar, long-term periods. If the tornado-shift trend is really permanent rather than cyclic in nature, it might logically follow that this tornado shift might be related to dryer-for-longer climatic conditions over Tornado Alley which potentially disrupt the return of low-level Gulf moisture in spring months that severe (and non-severe) storms are so dependent upon. In addition, a shift in where tornadoes are observed and reported may also be a function of evolving demographic trends: more tornadoes are being reported where more people are moving into; over the "long haul," recorded storm data may become skewed to mirror such population movement and especially urbanization. For example, if more people are leaving rural areas of Oklahoma and Kansas and are relocating in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, as part of a systematic trend seeking more urbanized economic opportunity, the tornado threat could also "move" eastward. Perhaps the tornado-frequency centroid is not really moving, but rather reflecting a redistributing or shuffling of population, which may or may not be either long-term or permanent.

But in the end, however, all natural world, observed "trends" are destined to cease sooner-or-later because the natural "norm" over years, decades, centuries and millennia is randomness. Observed trends are human constructs, usually designed to satisfy some short-sighted, fleeting, human-aided agendas which, in turn, perpetuate the "trend(s)" in a seemingly-endless feedback loop. Could the observed shift of Tornado Alley be an example of this: more man-made than of natural occurrence? Likely, it's some combination of both, as random natural events (such as long-term drought) may lead to permanent human actions or changes [such as seeking cooler or wetter (stormier?) places to live].

One thing is for sure, however: like "global warming," the "tornado-shift" question has been kicked around in meteorological circles for nearly half-a-century and is not going away anytime soon...

 

[Boris Konon]

Randy knows how to "stir (or stimulate) the pot," so to speak!

Before even going into the actual meteorological science here, you have to look at the state of things and the business.

The concept of "change" is a bottomless pit for ratings/clicks/likes. It is intrinsic to human nature and its connotation is almost universally negative these days. You can blame the climate change narrative a lot for that. The word has been turned into a harsh pejorative.

Humans fear the unknown, so "change" stated does a great job in implying that. Also, predicting the future. We as a society are obsessed w/ dystopian/apocalyptic futures. It's nothing new really, just greatly magnified by social media and the age of information.

Having problems, real, exaggerated, or invented, are big business. It can be monetized massively and used for manipulation and control.
But not all change is a problem or bad, but you'd never know that these days.

So the drive/motivation to bring up problems or issues, and thus promote change, is very high. Don't get me wrong, this is not fundamentally a bad concept, but as w/ anything it can and does get abused, and we don't have to kid ourselves in seeing how it is all abused these days!

Moving down the ladder as to view, is this apparent tornado frequency and region change a problem really? If it is, is it statistically significant? Does it have scalable impacts? The fact the change occurs, often not much or anything at all is said about *quantifying* the scale of the change. Just b/c change exists, does not mean it needs to be brought up, talked about, addressed, or tons of $$/resources thrown at it to "fix" it.

Going down to the next step to the actual tornado synoptic and mesoscale meteorology, one can talk about atmospheric changes all one wants concerning tornadoes, but the central U.S. being the absolute top by far for frequency of strong/intense tornadoes in the world has very little to do w/ the atmosphere, it is almost entirely due to the geography, which can be considered a *constant*!

1) We have a high N-S mountain chain in the West w/ prevailing westerly flow on top. This does two things on a synoptic-scale.
a) Promotes a strong EML much of the year
b) Lee-side low pressure from that westerly flow over the mountains results in backing of the low-level winds often, so
you get excellent turning of the winds sfc-aloft frequently, even on days where there is nothing much dynamically is
going on

2) E of the mountain range, you have large, flat plains that gradually slope upward, so low-level flow is smoother and
unimpeded for storms and the upward sloping terrain aids in convective initiation and maintenance (e.g. LLJ)

3) A large, relatively shallow, very warm body of water close-by.

4) The Plains are continental climate, while as you get farther E, it becomes more a marine-influenced climate.
Continental climate tends to be more unstable for the EML reason above. Farther E, deeper-layer moisture in the
mean causes mean instability to wane.

So you essentially can't take away the above in a changing climate.

Farther E, tornado potential is more limited overall. Why?

1) The EML weakens or is "used up" by convection that occurs in the Plains and/or the more moist climate

2) Low pressures have matured here vs. initial cyclogenesis and intensification farther W. You have better shear profiles
w/ developing low pressure.

An issue I see a lot these days is that things are too often viewed in a vacuum, or too focused, not considering all factors out there. Some of this is ignorance, but more often it is disingenuous omission of facts b/c it would deflate the narrative (problem/change) put forth in the first place!

And then we have the issues w/ the tornado dataset, not just how detection/documentation has changed over time, but ongoing today b/c tornadoes are only rated by proxy, not directly, for strength. Going from the Plains to the MS Valley and E, there are simply more damage indicators, natural and artificial, to reveal tornado strength better. Also, a significantly larger population and more cameras to more fully document tornadoes here. I would argue that we have many more strong/violent tornadoes in the Plains compared to the E, but we have no way currently to measure that. How many times does a tornado get a low or no rating in the Plains simply b/c it did not hit anything, but clearly from appearance alone, you know it is strong/violent?

Also, I would argue the number of weak/short-lived tornadoes missed/not documented the Plains is significantly higher than to the E, again, simply b/c of less population and infrastructure.

With a dataset w/ so many holes/gaps big and small, you have to wonder the veracity of such claims in trends in either direction. Not that there is zero change, b/c things are always changing to some degree, bu I got back to scaling/quantifying it all. Is it something we have to be concerned about or do anything? Too often for non-scientific reasons, mountains are made out of molehills or it's all about posting content, and veracity/quality be damned.