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Why Do Tornadoes Only Happen in Some States?
The Science of Tornado Alley
The American Midwest recently experienced a bunch of tornadoes. Throughout May 15 and May 16, 56 different events were documented. Several states, from Minnesota to Kentucky, were impacted. This even included a small tornado in my hometown! Luckily, no one was killed in that specific event, and only a few barns were damaged. However, the entire group of tornadoes in this recent outbreak killed over 20 people.
Tornadoes are pretty rare in Michigan, but they do happen occasionally. I grew up regularly doing drills for them in school, and have even had to shelter in place for a few actual events. The road that my childhood home was on was destroyed by a tornado in the 1940s. How worried you should be about tornadoes depends heavily on where you live. Check out the map below of tornado activity in the United States.
These crazy storms are not uniformly distributed at all, they are heavily concentrated in the region known as Tornado Alley. In fact, the United States has by far the most tornadoes of any country in the world, getting more than 4 times the number of tornadoes every year than all of Europe. On…
