Super Tuesday Super Storms

The other big story from Super Tuesday, as everyone surely knows, was the weather that hit five southern states that day. The death toll from the storms has now risen to 56, and the damage is almost unfathomable. The pictures from the area, especially from Tennessee, show what look more like war zones, bomb damage, than winter storms. There seems to be some kind of blame-the-victim going on, as many headlines read" Twisters kill (X number of people) despite repeated warnings from forecasters." But really, who could believe such weather happening in early February? I lived much of my life in tornado alley, and we never started emptying out the closet floors until about April at the earliest.

The question that leapt immediately into the minds of climate change freaks (yours truly being no exception) is "Are these freak February intense tornadoes the consequence of global warming?" The real answer is that no one actually knows, and climate/weather experts are being very careful not to jump to any hasty conclusions or say anything presumptive about this at all. The caveat is that "It's important to note that no weather event can be attributed to global warming, or said to have been caused by global warming." Back in August, however, NASA scientists developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth's climate warms. Tuesday's outbreak of storms was the second round of winter tornadoes this year, as Missouri - which has certainly experienced more than its share of disastrous winter weather this year - was struck by a round of them in early January. I think most of the country, just ask Californians, has been blasted by amazing destructive weather patterns in the past several months. I can only say, with Bob Dylan,....Something is happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Mr Jones?
(Photo credit: Tornadic supercell, Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog at Weather Underground.)

Technorati Tags: global climate change, NASA, super tuesday tornadoes, weather patterns,

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