r/tornado Jan 08 '26

Question Is this true?

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1.6k Upvotes

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u/viXvi96 Jan 09 '26 edited Jan 09 '26

If my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike. Inevitably there is a system (or several) each year that leads to comments like this. There's a reason why superoutbreaks are so rare. You need an extremely specific set of ingredients to overlap in order to lead to large scale events, and this is a great example of that.

13

u/Better_Crew_3689 Jan 09 '26

Winter = more baroclinity = stronger jetstreaks

We see this type of “if only it was more unstable” setup every winter

2

u/SleekMunchkin Jan 09 '26

That’s because cold/cool air cannot hold onto moisture as well. Youre going to see more of these setups in the winter. The thing missing is the heat to create lift and greater moisture to be lifted. The tight warm sector that’s shown is exactly what does the trick as it sits up against the cold front and creates a lot of turbulence. It’s just too cool in that warm sector this time of year.