Tornado Alley Has Shifted and I Don’t Know Who I Am, Anymore

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

When you’re a Kansan, there’s not a whole lot to hold on to for an identity. We have our flatness. We have a lot of wheat. We have some great college basketball. Other than that, there’s only one other thing people associate with Kansas, and that’s tornadoes, mostly because of The Wizard of OZ, though the storm-chaser documentaries have helped in recent years.

Thanks to Climate Change, though, Tornado Alley has shifted, and shifted a lot, both to the east and the south. In reality, Tornado Alley has expanded to include several more states now— but we’re also having fewer tornadoes here in Kansas. Don’t get me wrong, spring is still an exciting fucking season here, what with all the thunderstorms and tornadoes and microbursts and downbursts and hail and such. But the tornado sirens don’t seem to go off as often as they did when I was a kid.

Is Kansas losing its place in Tornado Alley?

Disturbingly, when we do have tornadoes here now, it seems as though more are happening after dark, which used to be rare. Conditions for tornadoes require cold air from high in the atmosphere mixing with warm, humid…