Over the weekend, more than 120 tornadoes ransacked across at least 11 states in a three-day severe weather outbreak that killed more than 40 people. In addition to the tornadoes, the storm system brought extremely strong winds to drought-stricken parts of the plains states, kicking up dust storms and wildfires from Texas to Kansas. The combined impact has now become one of the deadliest non-hurricane weather disasters in decades in the US.
At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (Noaa) Storm Prediction Center –the nerve center of severe weather forecasting in the US – scientists worked around the clock for days to anticipate the storms and give ample warning to those in their path. The center now has five staff vacancies, including two of its three senior roles in fire forecasting. Still, overworked meteorologists there passed one of the biggest tests yet of the newly diminished National Weather Service.
“The nerves always ratchet up a bit when you’re forecasting significant severe thunderstorms and tornadoes for your own communities,” said Elizabeth Leitman, a forecaster at Noaa’s Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma.
Even though the weather forecasts were eerily accurate this weekend, there are signs that the effects of the climate crisis are quickly catching up to amplify the impacts of these kinds of storms.
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1. This tornado outbreak was a preview of the future
As the climate warms, the annual springtime tornado season has been shifting eastward away from the plains states towards the southern US. That pattern held this weekend.
Not a single tornado was reported in Texas, Oklahoma, or Kansas – the three states most associated with tornadoes historically. Instead, tornadoes blanketed parts of Alabama and were recorded as far eastward as Pennsylvania.
The root cause for this shift is complex, but a big part is the warming Gulf of Mexico. Waters in the gulf are more than 10F warmer than normal for this time of year, which helps provide additional moisture in the atmosphere and helps keeps overnight temperatures especially elevated. Many of this weekend’s tornadoes also happened at night – making it more difficult for those impacted to seek shelter – another documented impact from global heating.
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2. Dust storms are a growing concern
As bad as the tornadoes were, it’s perhaps surprising just how destructive, widespread and deadly the dust storms became this weekend.
So far, this spring has featured a perfect mix of conditions for dust and fires in the central plains. The broad region from Arizona to Kansas has received less than 10% of normal rainfall over the past few months, and the drought scale is maxed out in parts of western Texas.
Last Friday was the windiest day in decades in Oklahoma, blowing in excess of 70mph across much of the state for hours and helping to fan wildfire flames. The high winds transported dust as far away as Wisconsin. In Kansas, blowing dust reduced visibility to nearly zero and triggered a massive highway pileup involving more than 70 vehicles.
The latest in a series of severe dust storms across the region this spring, and the frequency of dust storms is rapidly increasing in recent years as the decades-long drought in the south-west US continues.
The combined impact of the dust and tornadoes made this weekend’s storms one of the deadliest severe weather outbreaks since severe weather predictability greatly improved with the advent of Doppler radar in the 1980s.
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3. The most vulnerable are the ones most impacted
The public health impact of poor air quality due to dust storms is severe. Air pollution, including airborne dust, is the deadliest atmospheric phenomenon worldwide and kills more than 8 million people per year globally.
At one point this weekend, air quality throughout the midwest US was off the charts due to blown dust, with one measure topping out six times above ‘hazardous’ levels in St Louis – far beyond the level where the Environmental Protection Agency recommends limiting outdoor exposure.
This weekend’s storms reinforced the trend that people with preexisting health conditions, or those that live with few resources, are more likely to be harmed by severe weather. More than half of those that die in tornadoes live in impermanent housing – and that was true this weekend as well.
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Weather prediction skill has advanced rapidly over the past 10 years, but this weekend’s tornado forecasts were exceptionally accurate and given with longer advance notice than is typical.
It was just the third time in the 30-year history of the Storm Prediction Center that forecasters gave more than 24 hours’ notice of a “high risk” of a major tornado outbreak. In fact, forecasters there maxed out tornado probabilities for the outbreak six days in advance. In particular, one forecaster called Saturday’s tornado forecast “practically perfect”.
“Seeing where the high risk ended up for the deep south and comparing it to [six days in advance] is pretty remarkable,” said Leitman, who worked the overnight desk in the days leading up to the outbreak. Leitman said that Noaa has been increasingly using machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to help boost their forecasting skill, particularly multiple days in advance.
The added certainty and lead time resulted in people in Alabama spending the day in their basements because they knew the storms were coming.
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5. The Trump administration’s anti-DEI and Noaa staff/funding cuts are hitting
Staffing and funding cuts from the Trump administration are making it more difficult for Americans to cope with increasingly extreme weather.
“Decades of investment in weather science have turned previously surprise disasters into anticipated events we can prepare for, saving countless lives,” said Greg Carbin, who until recently served as the chief of the forecast operations branch for the NWS’s Weather Prediction Center. “When it comes to preparing and protecting the US population from nature’s wrath, slashing funding is not just reckless – it’s dangerous. You get what you pay for.”
