The heart-wrenching devastation in Kentucky and surrounding regions due to several tornadoes has caught everyone’s attention. Fortunately, meteorologists have been increasingly capable of issuing tornado warnings and have greatly reduced tornado-related death tolls.

But despite adequate warning, one tornado took direct aim on Mayfield, Kentucky, causing buildings to collapse and a horrible death toll.

The USA experiences more tornadoes than elsewhere, suffering, on average, over 1100 tornados a year. This is due to the mountain configurations that funnel cold, dry Arctic air southward to collide with warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico moving northward. Tornadoes are most common in the spring as solar warming drives warmer air northward to collide with the retreating cold winter air. Although rare in winter, tornadoes also happen in the winter.

Disturbingly, every disaster brings out the ambulance chasers hoping to profit from tragedy. As has become all too common, the ambulance-chasing climate journalists wasted no time trying to attribute this catastrophe to climate change, as seen by the Associated Press story that is now circulating in many outlets. Despite most scientists’ admitting that attribution of tornadoes to climate change is extremely difficult, the AP journalist tried to force a connection with statements like, “Warm weather was a critical ingredient in this tornado outbreak” and the standard blather that “extreme storms are becoming more common because we have a lot warmer air masses in the cool season that can support these types of severe weather outbreaks.”

But the science does not support such a narrative.

As seen in the illustration below, both cold and warm air are required. Tornadoes develop when the atmosphere becomes unstable as cold, dry air overlays warm, moist air. These conditions promote columns of intensively rising air. In addition, tornado formation requires spin, caused by winds from various directions (wind shear) imparting rotation.

I noticed all those tornado-promoting conditions were developing the day before. So, I am sure weather forecasters did, too. Here are screen shots from the website https://earth.nullschool.net/, a site I highly recommend to everyone who is interested in understanding weather and climate. I roughly overlayed a map of American states to help visualize the approximate locations of tornadoes, and a green circle to identify the location of Mayfield, Kentucky. This screenshot shows cold air (blue color), from the west and the Arctic, colliding with warm air (orange color), intruding from the Gulf of Mexico. Temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are just average, so the intruding warm air is not unusually warm, but does raise Mayfield, KY, temperatures to about 70°F. However, what has been unusual is the below-average cold temperatures overthe Great Plains.

The white lines represent the surface winds. The brighter the white, the stronger the winds. On the website the winds are animated, so I have added red arrows to show wind directions. With temperatures around southeastern Kansas at about 40°F, . winds from the northwest are cold, colliding with warm air from the south, creating lift and spin needed to spawn winter tornadoes.

The next screenshot is taken for the exact same time, but with an overlay of the atmosphere’s Total Precipitable Water. The cold air to the west and north is very dry (brown color); the warm air intruding from the Gulf of Mexico is very moist (blue color). Thus, all the conditions to spawn winter tornadoes are in place throughout the Mississippi River Valley.

It is also well established that a dip in the jet stream, as cold air pushes southward, is associated with extreme weather events and tornadoes. At the bottom of the trough wind speeds are slower, but the speeds increase as the winds exit the trough to the east. This increase in upper-level wind speed promotes a stronger low-pressure zone at the surface that intensifies cyclones and tornadoes.

Accordingly, the next screenshot, of the upper-level winds at 500 hPa (approximately 18,000 foot altitude), shows an upper-level trough forming to the west of Kentucky. The town of Mayfield is situated below the region where the jet steam is increasing speed and intensifying storms.

So, why did these conditions develop? One piece of the puzzle is the location of the Bermuda High pressure system and its clockwise circulation of winds. The Bermuda High is a key factor affecting tropical weather as well as how much warm, moist air gets pumped into the eastern USA. Scientists compare the ever-changing position and strength of the Bermuda High to the motion of a cork in the bathtub. Various waves and disturbances readily shift its location, making weather predictability very difficult, never mind determining any climate trends. When located further east in the Atlantic, droughts in the Midwest, and even the eastern USA can happen. The further west the Bermuda Highs are located,, the greater the amount of warm moist air gets pumped into the USA.

One factor affecting the location of the Bermuda High is the natural North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which can change its phase from month to month. When the NAO is in its positive phase, pressure increases, as well as the strength of the Trade Winds, and that pushes the Bermuda High further westward. So the NAO is used in weather forecasting. While recently bouncing between positive and negative phases, scientists had predicted the NAO would remain in its positive phase through mid-December 2021. As a result, warm, moist air was indeed pushed up the Mississippi River Valley in the winter, supplying the key ingredients that spawned the deadly tornadoes in Kentucky.

The mainstream media’s exploitation of this tragedy is another disturbing example of ambulance-chasing climate-change journalists failing to inform the public about natural extreme weather events.

Just as I finish crafting this presentation, I see Dr. Roy Spencer published an article on how increasing cold weather increases tornadoes. In terms of departures from normal, so far this year in the northern plains it has been one of the coldest places, as average temperatures are 5-10 degrees below normal.

Spencer also posted this graph showing the declining trend in violent tornadoes, again refuting the idea that global warming is related to any increase in destructive tornadoes.

Choosing to fear monger a bogus climate crisis narrative is so disgustingly shameful. But sadly, President Biden, despite lacking any scientific knowledge, joined the fear mongers, saying, “the intensity of the weather across the board has some impact, as a consequence of the warming of the planet and climate change. The fact is, that we all know, everything is more intense when the climate is warming everything, and obviously it has some impact here.”

Really, Joe?

This article is adapted from a transcript of a video presentation by the author and is used by permission.

Editor’s note: BBC News and other media presented graphs like this one from NOAA showing an increase in the number of recorded tornadoes in the US since 1950 to bolster the claim that climate change, aka global warming, was causing more of them.

But the increase in tornadoes observed is largely attributable to improved technology for detecting them. Many small tornadoes went unobserved in the past. Now sophisticated equipment allows us to observe them. Major tornadoes—F3 or F4—rarely go unobserved even without the sophisticated equipment. The decline in their number shown by the prior graph refutes the claim that global warming causing increased frequency or intensity of tornadoes.—E. Calvin Beisner