Tornado Alley: UK Here in Britain it is currently the height of summer, which of course means it&rsq

Tornado Alley: UKHere in Britain it is currently the height of summer, which of course means it’s raining…..a lot. It’s fair to say we Brits are obsessed with our weather, but many may be surprised to learn we lead the world in a rather unlikely category: Tornado frequency. When land areas are taken into account (Larger countries will have more tornadoes simply because they are larger), Britain has the highest frequency of reported tornadoes per unit area in the world.In the period 1980 – 2012 the UK averaged 34.3 tornadoes annually with 19.5 days in which at least 1 tornado was reported. The British tornadoes do, however, have a few key differences from their better known American counterparts. The vast majority of British twisters only rank an EF0/EF1 (65-110 mph) on the Enhanced Fujita scale, with the strongest storms producing up to an EF2(111-135 mph), paling in comparison to the EF5 (261-318 mph) monsters that strike the American Midwest. This difference is due, in part, to the vast size difference between the United States and the UK; the larger land mass of the US allows for larger temperature gradients and stronger atmospheric instability compared to the UK where the smaller relative landmass restricts the thermal energy available to storms. As a result the larger super-cell formations capable of spawning the strongest tornadoes are extremely rare in Britain.While tornadoes do occur throughout the year, the US has a well-defined tornado season (March – June) when the majority of tornadoes form. The UK also experiences tornadoes all year round but has a much less well-defined tornado season, typically distributed throughout the year more evenly.The image below shows the cumulative percent probability of a tornado occurring in a 10km grid box across the British Isles and is taken from a recently published paper (Link Below) from the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of Manchester. While the detail behind it cannot be covered in a single post, the data clearly shows a hotspot between London and Reading extending south. There is a 6% chance of a tornado occurring per year in this area, and a 5% chance in a zone extending from Bristol to Manchester.While British fatalities caused by tornadoes are rare, injuries and property damage in the millions are common enough to warrant the study of British tornadoes, their distribution and how they may be affected by climate change.RJWImage Credit - Mulder, K. J., & Schultz, D. M. (2015). Climatology, Storm Morphologies, and Environments of Tornadoes in the British Isles: 1980-2012. Monthly Weather Review, (2015). http://bit.ly/1LOpcBIPaper from the University of Manchester - Mulder, K. J., & Schultz, D. M. (2015). Climatology, Storm Morphologies, and Environments of Tornadoes in the British Isles: 1980-2012. Monthly Weather Review, (2015). http://bit.ly/1LOpcBITORRO (The Tornado and Storm Research Organisation) - http://bit.ly/1ghc38P -- source link

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