Farm workers know the importance of keeping abreast of severe weather. If you are outside, you are more vulnerable to the perils of lightning, floods, and dangerous winds and tornadoes. A new study published this week and described here in LiveScience discusses changes in the spring tornado season (March-May) that we may see if the climate in the Southeast continues to warm up. Based on a new model which does a better job of capturing the atmospheric dynamics related to severe weather, the scientists showed that across much of the Southeast, conditions conducive to severe weather are expected to increase.
The figure below shows the areas where increases (in red) and decreases (in blue) are most likely. In Georgia, for example, the occurrence of severe weather is expected to increase slightly while in Florida, a decrease is expected. The authors also noted that the severe weather was shifted to earlier in the year, with more storms in March and less in May. The authors did not look at other seasons of the year, so it is not clear what effects might be seen during the fall secondary severe weather season or in other months of the year. In the Southeast, tornadoes have been observed in every month of the year.
