Expect even more killer tornados like Rolling Fork study says

A new study is warning Americans that they will soon face more killer tornados and powerful supercell storms like the one that devastated Mississippi in late March. 

Published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the study warned that warming weather will cause supercell storm increases across most of the United States. 

The researchers used high-resolution climate simulations to study fifteen epochs of supercell activity across much of the United States over the late twentieth century and developed a predictive model that could help pinpoint the location of major hotspots.

The results revealed supercell activity will be much more frequent in the future and it will be the Eastern United States that bears the brunt of the new storm systems while former hotspots in the Great Plains will see a reduction in storm activity.  

According to the study’s authors, supercell storms are also expected to escalate outside of their traditional seasons and some areas could see a peak in severe storms in late winter and early spring under all the emission scenarios that were examined. 

Supercell storm activity is likely to fall off from midsummer through to the fall but that won’t prevent storms from being more destructive than what we’ve faced in the past. 

“These results suggest the potential for more significant tornadoes, hail, and extreme rainfall that, when combined with an increasingly vulnerable society, may produce disastrous consequences,” the study’s authors wrote in the abstract of their paper. 

Southern states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee were singled out as places where human populations faced the most amount of risk from increased killer tornadoes whereas states west of Interstate 35 will have far less risk from any supercell storm activity. 

The study’s authors listed a number of caveats that could affect their predictions, with the most important being the small number of years they ultimately simulated. 

Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein dug into the results of the study to provide a more digestible understanding of just how big an impact future supercell storm growth could be in the United States as the country moves towards a warmer future. 

According to Borenstein, the study predicted that there would be a 6.6% overall increase in supercell storm activity across the nation and a 25.8% jump in the time period the most dangerous storms will be active in the most vulnerable areas. 

“That includes Rolling Fork,” Borenstein wrote, “where study authors project an increase of one supercell a year by the year 2100,” a worrying prospect considering just how much damage the recent tornado proved to be in Mississippi. 

Supercell storms are one of nature’s most powerful weather systems. They can produce deadly tornadoes and destructive hailstorms that can last for hours. “They have a rotating powerful updraft of wind and can last for hours,” according to The Independent. 

Powerful supercell storms have spawned several times throughout the last decade, including one incident known as the 2011 Supercell Outbreak that killed over 320 people in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and the Mid-South. 

Photo by GOES Science Project Team, Own Work,  Wiki Commons

Ashely Walker was one of the lead authors of the study and said that his study isn’t theoretical research, Americans are already living through his predictions today. 

“The data that I’ve seen has persuaded me that we are in this experiment and living it right now,” Ashley said just days before the Rolling Fork tornado hit, according to Seth Borenstein. “What we’re seeing in the longer term is actually occurring right now," Ashley added.