Is Tornado Alley shifting east or not? All discussion here

[WeathermanLeprechaun]

I've seen this debate come up many times on many, several, different threads after certain events or just something that came up as a topic. I figured, why not make a thread if s many people have thoughts to bring to the table regarding it?

My one rule i will enforce with this one is do not get overly heated. This is a question one can not definitively answer, so all explanations or thoughts go here.

 

[Central Ohio Wx]

No. Simple as that. Just look at the Dixie outbreaks from the 1700s (yes, they happened and we have proof of it) and 1800s outbreaks. Dare I say that “tornado alley” doesn’t even exist? The entire country has seen tornadic activity and it can happen basically anywhere given the setup; there isn’t really a centralized area where it happens most frequently unless you basically include the entire continental US east of the Rockies.

 

[Ozonelayer]

The way I see it, the entire area east of the Rocky Mountains is one big "Tornado Alley"

 

[Maxis_s]

I think it occurs in cycles. Just like the Earth has major heating and cooling cycles that last hundreds or even thousands of years each, it's gonna have smaller-scale cycles that last a few years to a few decades, and I believe the main "tornado alley" shifts occasionally.
The 1974 Super Outbreak took place in both the Midwest and the Deep South, which means we always had extreme occurrences outside of traditional tornado alley, as well as Palm Sunday which takes place in an area that hasn't seen a violent tornado in multiple decades.
Starting around the 1980s, it seems like big tornado activity started to shift further west into traditional tornado alley, and I think we're getting an eastward shift the last decade or so.
I don't think it's really related to global warming/climate change, or at least related enough to anthropogenic climate change to make enough of a difference to differentiate it from previous cycles.