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Severe WX March 30th- April 1st 2023 (South, Southeast, Ohio Valley, Upper Midwest)

WxMan42711 said:
i also think its worth noting that events like friday are rare to begin with. you hardly ever get an overlap of necessary ingredients over such a wide area, and im not sure that the true frequency of this occurrence can be confidently adjudicated from the relatively limited amount of data we have (1950 - now). as such, im not sure their frequency would even palpably strengthen a claim that its related to climate change. that's not to say it is or is not related to cc, but it is to say its just not one of the solidest metrics
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Yeah, even considering our limited knowledge of tornado events from before the Doppler era, it’s clear that major events (i.e. events that produce large numbers of long-track and/or significant tornadoes) are rare, on the order of one every few years, and that there are sometimes fairly long gaps between such events. The problem with claiming that they’ve increased or decreased in frequency due to anthropogenic warming is that our knowledge of tornado events drops off significantly not long before the starting point of detectable anthropogenic warming, so historical/statistical evidence for trends related to anthropogenic warming are hard to compare because you don’t really have a great control group to test them against. I’m not a meteorologist (I was a very mediocre physics/calculus student) but just from a purely statistical perspective, these claims don’t pass muster.
 
I don't have any stats or links to back this up, so take this with a puny little grain of salt, but FWIW I recall hearing a couple times awhile back, from both a documentary (I think it was one of Grazulis' documentaries, maybe Twisters: Natures Fury) and from a storm chaser on one of these websites, that there was a similar pattern in the latter half of the 20th Century. There was a spike in notable Dixie/Ohio Valley tornadic events in the 60s and 70s, including the Super Outbreak and the 1977 Birmingham F5. Then a noticeable lengthy dip in activity throughout the 80s, with some exceptions (1985 OH/PA/ON outbreak and Edmonton/Yellowstone 1987 come to mind). In fact, I believe there was only one American F5 in the 80s. Anyways, IF I am in fact remembering right, and IF that is true, it does sound somewhat similar to what we have going on now. There was a spike in activity (including a huge Super Outbreak and many violent tornadoes), then seemingly a decline in activity with a few notable events here and there (including Vilonia, Rochelle, and December 2021). Again, though, that's just me rambling with hearsay, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

All that said, tornado activity definitely increased again starting around the early 90s, particularly in the plains. So, we'll see what happens in the coming decade.
 
atrainguy said:
I don't have any stats or links to back this up, so take this with a puny little grain of salt, but FWIW I recall hearing a couple times awhile back, from both a documentary (I think it was one of Grazulis' documentaries, maybe Twisters: Natures Fury) and from a storm chaser on one of these websites, that there was a similar pattern in the latter half of the 20th Century. There was a spike in notable Dixie/Ohio Valley tornadic events in the 60s and 70s, including the Super Outbreak and the 1977 Birmingham F5. Then a noticeable lengthy dip in activity throughout the 80s, with some exceptions (1985 OH/PA/ON outbreak and Edmonton/Yellowstone 1987 come to mind). In fact, I believe there was only one American F5 in the 80s. Anyways, IF I am in fact remembering right, and IF that is true, it does sound somewhat similar to what we have going on now. There was a spike in activity (including a huge Super Outbreak and many violent tornadoes), then seemingly a decline in activity with a few notable events here and there (including Vilonia, Rochelle, and December 2021). Again, though, that's just me rambling with hearsay, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

All that said, tornado activity definitely increased again starting around the early 90s, particularly in the plains. So, we'll see what happens in the coming decade.
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Yeah this is kind of my point. There have been trends like this (increases and decreases in frequency of major tornado outbreaks) for as long as we have reliable tornado records. Obviously the data for intensity is skewed by the fact that standards for damage surveying/rating have changed over time and that they aren't even consistent from one NWS office to another in the same time period, but even just going by raw numbers, it's clear that the pattern ebbs and flows. Like I said, there's obviously the problem that tornado data from the period prior to the estimated start of anthropogenic warming is less reliable and comparisons between the two eras will inevitably be skewed by that, but the suggestion that gaps between larger events is a recent phenomenon doesn't hold water.

Anyway, getting back to the actual topic of the thread, the suggestion that this event, the biggest in nearly three years, isn't a major outbreak is completely unserious. It's been a long time since we've seen an event with this kind of geographic scope as well, since the Easter 2020 event was relatively localized.
 
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UK_EF4 said:


To give some context.
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Well we got fairly close. We're currently at 119 confirmed tornadoes for this outbreak, so if at least one more is confirmed that makes two historic outbreaks in 12 years.

If that's only the average, I'm assuming there were other decades that only had 1 historic outbreak. Wonder what those ones were. Maybe the 80s like I was talking about earlier?
 
atrainguy said:
Well we got fairly close. We're currently at 119 confirmed tornadoes for this outbreak, so if at least one more is confirmed that makes two historic outbreaks in 12 years.

If that's only the average, I'm assuming there were other decades that only had 1 historic outbreak. Wonder what those ones were. Maybe the 80s like I was talking about earlier?
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If you see one of his previous tweets, the "120" he's referring to is actually a point system he's making based on sigtors, iirc. We've passed the 120 mark based on said points system (which could be considered arbitrary, to be honest, but it obviously furthers the point that this outbreak was particularly intense).
 
WhirlingWx said:
If you see one of his previous tweets, the "120" he's referring to is actually a point system he's making based on sigtors, iirc. We've passed the 120 mark based on said points system (which could be considered arbitrary, to be honest, but it obviously furthers the point that this outbreak was particularly intense).
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Ahh, my bad then. Thanks for pointing that out!
 
atrainguy said:
Well we got fairly close. We're currently at 119 confirmed tornadoes for this outbreak, so if at least one more is confirmed that makes two historic outbreaks in 12 years.

If that's only the average, I'm assuming there were other decades that only had 1 historic outbreak. Wonder what those ones were. Maybe the 80s like I was talking about earlier?
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He means this outbreak was only the second after Easter 2020 since 2011 to reach 'historic level'. The number isn't actually tornado count I believe, but a 'points' system he uses to score outbreaks. He is essentially saying this is one of the worst outbreaks since 2011.

Edit: see someone already said it, sorry for repeating!
 
A Guy said:
A tad surprised we're still only at one EF4 for such a large outbreak.
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UK_EF4 said:
He means this outbreak was only the second after Easter 2020 since 2011 to reach 'historic level'. The number isn't actually tornado count I believe, but a 'points' system he uses to score outbreaks. He is essentially saying this is one of the worst outbreaks since 2011.

Edit: see someone already said it, sorry for repeating!
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What is his criteria on outbreaks? Is it
Total tornados? Some kind of scoring system based on EF scores? Path lengths? Etc?
 
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