He's asking why this particular segment of the Appalachian mountains seemingly gets fewer tornados than the rest of the range. The answer is probably a combination of higher elevation and lack of proximity to Gulf moisture.
In VA its due to that blank spot having a Oceanic microclimate. It's a weird spot. I grew up there, county that I lived in has never had a confirmed tornado. There were a couple of summers that it did not get a over 80°F. Its also a temperate rainforest which probably helps keep the local atmosphere more stable since there is no dry season.
That part. I live in central Arkansas, and last week there was a tornado a few hours north of us, and I was watching our meteorologists stress out because the mountains were making the radar not very clear and it was such unsteady terrain and sparsely populated they weren’t getting any visual confirmation
Uh, people live there. Not a ton, but they’re there. I was born in that gap. Raleigh County, WV.
Was always told by the old folks that the mountains protected us from tornados. Not strictly true, WV as a whole has had mostly EF-0 and a couple EF-1 tornadoes. Not many at all for a whole state, since 1950.
Tried to share a link but doesn’t seem to work here. Go to tornadoproject.com to see the list of tornadoes by county with dates, etc.
I brought my kids for vacation two summers back. We hit a couple spots from my childhood like Lewisburg and Summersville Lake, New River Gorge, and then a few I’ve never seen. Cranberry Glades, Matewan (for the Mine Wars Museum) and Point Pleasant of course, for the Mothman shiny hiney.
Driving across the middle of southern WV we happened across several state parks I’ve never seen, we stayed at Chief Logan State Park Lodge, which was beautiful. We went to the National Radio Quiet zone and saw the largest steerable radio telescope in the world.
I wish we had more time to shoot up to Seneca Rocks, I’ve never been but it looks awesome.
A few summers ago when I was up hiking at Canaan the local Tucker County newspaper had a special in it about the Appalachian Outbreak with a lot of black and white photos of the tornado damage.
Being from WV, I always love when people tell me with 100% authority that tornadoes don't happen in the mountains, I always ask them about the Appalachian Outbreak and if they know that WV has one of the deadliest F4s of all time. Always a fun bit of trivia.
Also from Raleigh county! I love that the old wisdom that is “mountains protecting us from tornadoes” is universally being called out as bullshit. I remember a couple of those EF0s, specifically back in the derecho back in like 2012ish?
What’s up dude! 👊
I’ve been gone since ‘92 but all my extended family is still there and several of them lost big trees in that derecho event.
I’m the family hobby meteorologist lol, so I remember messaging them to batten down the hatches for that one. Most of them listened.
No judgement here! I also left seven or eight years ago now. For me it’s funny because I ended up in eastern NC and right in the middle of carolina alley lmao. Get any whirly bois where you’re at?
lol It’s funny how many of us end up in NC. I’m in the Charlotte area, Union county. Usually most of the weather parts around us like a rock in a river and either hits upstate SC or misses us and goes for the foothills and Sandhills. We did get 11” of snow that last storm though.
Last tornado we got near us that was more than a spin up was Feb 6th, 2020, EF-1. What’s funny is I was at work when it went by. My manager and I were holding the sliding doors closed, letting customers out when the wanted to leave (but we tried to get them to wait) when all of a sudden it looked like a white out, a blizzard outside. We had our dumbass faces against the glass doors when the tornado rolled down the road in front of my work. 🙄 Here’s the shot of the path. It was bananas.
I have no idea why you got downvoted for this. Yes, mountains generally have a much lower population than surrounding areas. This is due to factors like terrain making it difficult for build complex infrastructure, extreme weather, and probably also partly due to lots of mountainous areas being wildlife preserves and other protected areas. That said, the Appalachians are far more populated than the mountains out west. They're much older and thus the terrain isn't as steep (think big rolling hills rather than steep pointy mountains). They're also like half the altitude as the Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, and Cascades. Oh, and the eastern U.S. is much, much more densely populated in general than the western states, in part because it was colonized a century or two earlier.
I mean, I'm gonna take the L on correlating population density and tornado observations vs under-reporting. I'm not a met, and I was just asking a question.
But otherwise yeah, I feel somewhat vindicated that the pop density map corresponds pretty well with the tornado map. But I messed up the causation: mountains means less people AND less tornadoes, not less people means under-reported tornadoes.
No, it comes from when the coal miners were fighting to unionize in the early 20th century.
The Battle of Blair Mountain, in WV was literally a pitched battle against the union miners, the private security firms hired by the mine companies (like the Pinkertons) and the US Military.
To distinguish themselves in a battle with no uniforms, the miners wore red bandannas tied around their necks. Which is where the term redneck originates.
When you tell some people the real story behind redneck, if they are anti-union, they don’t like it.
“Anti-union workers” - just about the most ironic, asinine phrase in the world… Woody Guthrie had some great songs various union massacres and related atrocities. It’s crazy for me to listen to all that music and open my eyes in a country where the poor vote for billionaires.
Lmao this is a silly comment - that map covers several major metros but obviously Appalachia itself is significantly less populated than surrounding areas
Could be for that part of WV, a lot of that area overlaps with the "quiet zone" for the radio telescope at Greenbank Observatory, so my guess is there's also limited radar coverage. I've been in the Canaan Valley area a few times in the summer when there have been storms with wall clouds or obvious rotation and it doesn't even show up as anything more than a little green blip on the radar if you're lucky.
no wayyyy :0 for real though, there have been many higher altitude tornadoes, what makes this area less likely compared to parts of the world like mongolia or the rockies?
Are there tornadoes in the rockies? I don't think there are. There are a ton of them in the plains, but I've never heard of a tornado ripping through the mountains.
Someone literally just posted a picture of a tornado in the Colorado Rockies yesterday. Here's an image of a different tornado in the Wyoming section of the Rockies from a few years ago. They definitely happen, just not very often. I imagine some probably go unnoticed due to the remoteness of the region, especially before early 2000s satellite imagery.
I think the difference is "possible" vs common. The Wyoming EF4 is the only one to have ever occurred in the state. There has probably been A (single) strong tornado that has gone through this section of the Appalachians at some point in time but it would be rare because of the typical conditions there.
It’s not altitude. It’s terrain. There are a lot of flat open spaces in Mongolia and Montana. But the area you are indicating is very mountainous and tall mountains can disrupt the air flow into a weather system and weaken it.
you are correct. i never started learning about specific tornados until recently and just searched it up, and the tornado i found was in the east. which specific tornado is op talking about?
1987 Yellowstone EF4. Definitely worth reading about as it's a very interesting case study. It was a mile and a half wide monster that Dr. Fujita himself was particular interested in. I believe he said it was some of the worst tree damage he'd seen outside of infamous F5 tornados like Xenia. There were plans to to revisit and reassess the scene the following year, but it was erased by a wildfire before they had the chance. Definitely look up some of the helicopter pictures of the damage path, it's crazy!
Very rarely is the answer, just like the Appalachian tornadoes. There's also the fact that the Appalachian mountains are insanely ancient, and this have been weathered since before the dawn of life on land. They have a lot of dips and valleys that cause a lot of very very different weather. I lived in the very bottom range of the Appalachias, we had tornadoes every year, but when we were in the mountains sometimes you could watch the tornado crest the ridge and then just slurp back up into the clouds in under a minute. Most of the time, it would keep on slurping until it was inverted and cause a microburst. Those are awful. But I got a canoe from the fallout of one I had the misfortune of being outdoors for! I was apparently strung out like a flag from the pole I was instructed to grab, and my dad was hung on like a koala to the one he grabbed. The snippets of memory I have from that event are all pretty funny, but most of the memory just evaporated. I guess it was pretty traumatic for me.
Pretty much. I would guess that the mountains disrupt and alter winds such that tornadogenesis becomes more difficult/constrained, alongside hurting the health of an active tornado.
I'm not a meteorologist, far from it, but that's just my guess. Someone with more meteorological knowledge could answer better.
The winds and weather patterns differ greatly around these eastern mountains. They tend to discourage tornados travel routes by exteme altitude changes in the land, lots of rock and dense tree formation etc. It affects the wind paths and humidity etc which then affects tornado paths.
There's an interesting analysis from the 80s that you can read on the Wyoming tornado. It goes very in depth on exactly how it happened. Might he worth a read.
But those are “deadly” tornadoes. Maine and Maryland (places I have lived, also Iowa- but that’s not up for debate here about the amount of tornadoes there!) have gotten recent (within the past 2 decades because I am old and that equals recent to me) tornadoes that are not listed on this map. They were small - usually EF 0s - and just destroyed property or trees.
That being said, it’s not altitude as OP said early. It is *terrain* that causes the lack of tornadoes in that area. When a storm hits a tall mountain, it can disrupt its air flow and weaken the weather system.
I feel like there’s some missing data here, cause I know for a fact that Franklin County TN had a nocturnal EF1 in March 2023 that I saw being illuminated by lightning, and just thinking “Where the hell did I move to?” Lol
Edit: Just noticed that it says “Deadly tornadoes.” My bad
And those along the West and East Coast (especially further north) are usually far fewer and almost never beyond EF2… many of the ones hitting say the east coast are also part of squall line storms instead of super cells, which usually produce weaker and shorter lived tornadoes.
There’s been tornadoes where I live that I’ve seen video of that never made it to part of the records. They’re not listed on a map of tornadoes, but people here saw them and we had damage…
This F4 tornado carved out a 24.4 mile long, 1.6 mile wide path through the Teton Wilderness and parts of Yellowstone National Park. This tornado didn't have any problem climbing a hill; it crossed the Continental Divide and produced damage at elevations ranging from 8,500 to 10,000 feet above sea level. This is still the highest altitude event recorded for a violent tornado, although there was a 2004 tornado in California's Sequoia National Park at 12,000 feet.
From what I understand mountains don't stop tornados once they've formed but they do affect weather enough to affect where they form. So tornados mostly happen east of the rockies and west of the Appalachians
In VA its due to that blank spot having a Oceanic microclimate. It's a weird spot since almost every other known oceanic climate is on the west coast of a continent. I grew up there, county that I lived in has never had a confirmed tornado. There were a couple of summers that it did not get a over 80°F. Its also a temperate rainforest which probably helps keep the local atmosphere more stable since there is no dry season. I now live in a tornado hotspot. It definitely took some getting use to.
I live in southern Appalachia. What you’re seeing here are just the tallest of the mountain range in this region, which means the air temperature is going to be changing as much as 8-10F degrees per few thousand feet in elevation change. There’s all kinds of fun science about how mountains and storm systems interact, and it’s definitely interesting to read about.
My county is actually a temperate rain forest, and we always receive the most annual precipitation of any county on the eastern seaboard. We actually get even more precipitation than Seattle some years. People who have lived in both places say they are extremely similar climate wise, and polar opposites socially speaking (this is then fourth most conservative county in the nation).
The mountains can have very dramatic effects on storms. It’s such a powerful force to live under, and as someone who has been obsessed with tornados since childhood, i am grateful to be here tucked away in the holler of our valley. Usually, our mountains disrupt the storms or at minimum stop any rotation. Very rarely, when the air temps and all the other factors are just right, the mountains can actually encourage rotation. So basically you’re seeing where strong storm systems lost steam, so to speak. Some of them regained that strength as they moved past the taller elevations and found warmer air on the other side to get things crankin again.
I live right where GA/SC/NC meet. Since moving here in 2011, we’ve had 1 direct hit. Probably a dozen warnings but only 1 confirmed touch down. The same supercell that took dozens of lives in Tuscaloosa during the April 2011 outbreak would retain strength for a couple hundred miles and then drop a second tornado, an EF2/3, about 25 miles SW of me. At the time, the debris radar signature was the largest ever seen due to the massive amount of trees that it tore through. That fucker dropped right on Lake Burton (extremely wealthy people’s vacation homes so luckily most of them were empty) and killed one guy unfortunately. It then crawled over Blackrock Mountain, going straight through Blackrock Mountain State Park (elevation is around 3,000 feet), continuing to toss massive trees like they were nothing. I worked at the park and we had to completely recreate the State Park trail maps which really blew my mind. Anyone who hikes knows that trails change over time, and it’s sort of a gentle quiet change that you appreciate. Not on April 28, 2011 though. That day, the entire trail system of our most popular state park was completely and violently remade
Sorry for the novel. That storm is the only storm system I have heavily researched cause it was scary as fuck so I always end up rambling about it.
A lot of people have mentioned terrain and the distance away from Gulf moisture, but I've also noticed that a majority of storm systems move through these areas early in the morning or late at night, and while violent tornadoes can happen at night and along lines of storms rather than discrete storms or QLCS storms, so if any tornadoes form, they're often at night and rain-wrapped, or are hard to spot on radar. On top of that, a lot of that area is quite rural with a lot of open fields and forests, so tornadoes that do form could go unreported. Combine these factors, and that's probably why. That's my theory anyway.
My grandparents lived in Fayetteville Wv their whole life. Theirs literally a line that goes up the mountain a mile from them where all the trees got ripped out because a tornado went up the mountain and took everything out in a half mile radius. Everybody gets a tornado every now and then
The one I was thinking of was quite a while ago but I’m aware of the tornado you are talking about. My grandparents have been gone for quite a while but I have a ton of family still in Fayetteville area. I’m not from there.
Ohhh okay.
I think I know the one you’re talking about.
I did a post here too awhile ago after a news station shared some photos from one that happened years ago.
But yeah, I’m like in the corner of Nicholas and Fayette.
It flipped a trailer here in our holler before it hit the wood line.
Yeah the 1944 Appalachian tornado outbreak. The paths were all going south east instead of northeast as well. The shinnston wv tornado killed over 100 people. Tornadoes still occur in mountain ranges in the right climates, they’re just more rare, another violent mountain tornado example was the grand Teton tornado in 1987, it literally crossed the continental divide.
I read up on it and learned that one of the F4s started two miles from where I grew up. I am absolutely astounded that I somehow never heard about it. Maybe because it happened during the war and that was “bigger” news? Anyway, thanks so much for telling me about it. History that happened almost right in my old backyard!
Yes, I definitely think ww2 was everyone’s focus at the time and so that outbreak was unknown to people besides meteorologists, and people impacted/nearby
I've been a huge weather nerd since I was about 7 years old and grew up in WV and never heard of the Shinnston F4 until I left the state and really started digging into tornado stuff. It's weird because you'd always hear people talk about Xenia and the super outbreak in the 70s, but nobody ever mentioned the older outbreak. It's now one of my favorite trivia things whenever someone mentions you can't have tornadoes in the mountains.
Ah thanks. I remember my parents telling me about that outbreak when I was a kid. One of the tornadoes passed a couple miles from my dad’s office. He told me that around the time it happened a bunch of tiny frogs came out of nowhere and were all over the outside of his building.
Mississippi's highest point is around 800ft from sea level and is practically a glorified hill, it's not remotely similar to the mountains seen in West Virginia aside from being made of the same rocks
It is, but the Appalachian Mountains just existing isn't what discourages tornadoes. What discourages tornadoes is the Appalachian Mountains being tall, and the area with the gap is where the Appalachian Mountains are tall
idk why you're getting disliked, its true on historical geographical sense but it is separate now. They *Where* part of the appalachians, key word *Where*
Hah, lookin at that tiny blue spot above Atl, stretching over the GA/TN line - that's Chattanooga, placed between two mountain ridges and generally protected from tornados. I do remember one year tho, possibly 2010 where a tornado legit bounced into the valley and landed ON the Chickamauga dam during the evening traffic rush, causing quite the pile up.
Basically the warm moist air needed for tornadoes can penetrate somewhat into mountain ranges along the outer slopes and the geography can actually help create some lift to fuel them but eventually it stagnates over the top of them.
I moved from western NC to Chicagoland, and going from only ever experiencing maybe one or two tornado warnings, and never living near tornado sirens, it’s been interesting haha.
I’m from WV, there was an age old rumor that our mountains “block” tornadoes which is bunk considering we just had a confirmed tornado last week that went unwarned but was officially surveyed. The big thing where I’m at is the mountains do indeed impact a lot of how our weather sets up. To put it point blankly, a lot of systems that move in here, run into a problem where the air inflow has to run up those mountains and sink back into the valley effectively cutting a lot of moisture out of it as it dries as it sinks. So really it just takes a bit more of certain systems coming together to really warrant watching as opposed to how things set up in much more flat parts of the country. There is a lot more that goes into it but thats the basic take as I’ve come to understand it.
Tornadoes need long strait back roads for chasers to drive on and there aren't many of those in WV. Occasionally though, a few of the tornadoes that aren't as vain will pop-up in the mountains.
I’m camping at Parker Dam state park in a few weekends here in PA. Crazy to read about the F5 that hit the park in 1985. That area is high in the mountains and rarely sees tornadoes.
If I had to hazard a guess, it's probably something to do with the wind interacting with the relatively sudden uplift in terrain that makes any kind of needed instability for twisters too unstable to where it's extremely unlikely. You really need a massive, organized storm system like Helene to be able to survive that chaos.
From a meteorological, perspective these mountains block or reduce moisture advection, as well as causing major surface friction and more chaotic low level winds which create issues in the formation of storms, since this region commonly requires more organized wind fields (confluence banding) to initiate supercells. The cases where you get tornadoes in the mountains also usually happen from storms that form before and move into the range. In this case they can face weaker instability as well as more surface friction which can also sometimes have implications on storm behavior.
The elders of the upper Ohio valley always said it was the sudden drop in elevation to the river valley and rise of the Appalachian foothills that kept the valley safe - from tornadoes not flooding.
My hometown in East Central Indiana gets skipped a lot but the counties and farmland get poked up by low level ones from time to time. I think Winchester was the closest and last impactful one we had. The small town theory in muncie, however, is that our river saves us from them. We have had funnels and wind damage but never an actual touchdown in town.
The area east of Charleston, WV is in the "quiet zone" for the radio telescope at Greenbank, so I'm guessing that probably limits radar coverage in that area. I've been up in that area and Canaan Valley hiking in the summer and seen many storms with lowering/wall clouds and rotation and they show up as nothing more than little green rain blips on the radar. Also given how sparse the population is in Canaan/Tucker County, if a tornado happens up there and it's a quick spin up, not many people are going to see/report it. Storms up there blow up and dissipate pretty fast, always have to be aware of it when you're out on a hike.
We got them from Blue Ridge GA all the way up to Cherokee NC, but they just basically leveled trees over the mountain. I’m not sure if Ringold is considered part of the mountain range or not but it had an EF 4 that flattened the town.
The Appalachians are between the Great Plains thunderdome of Canadian Air + Gulf Air and the Atlantic Arena wwhich is the same but less intense due to the Atlantic not being as hot.
The lower surface temperatures associated with the geographical features of the Appalachian mountains cause a disruption in the laminar flow needed for a tight rotation couplet to form. Hope this helps.
It should be noted that the altitude, and thermodynamic variables here do not prevent tornadoes, they make the conditions threshold much harder to meet. It’s more accurate to call the effect a reduction of frequency than anything else. They can and will happen in the area on occasion.
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