By Kassidy Tsikitas | Staff Writer
Several Baylor students, staff and faculty have been affected by the recent changes in weather that have been filled with rain, thunderstorms and softball-sized hail.
On April 26, a warning was sent out to McLennan County about severe weather that included a tornado expected to cross Waco that night.
Waco junior Hope Tucker said she was on campus at the time of the tornado and added she wasn’t too nervous about the weather, but the frequency of tornado warnings is alarming.
“I didn’t think there was any reason to be nervous since the last serious tornado in Waco was in the 1950s,” Tucker said. “I did have some pretty serious hail damage to my car; I definitely wasn’t expecting that, it didn’t seem like hail was a real possibility since it had been so hot earlier that week.”
Studies show that “Tornado Alley,” including midwestern and southern states such as Texas, are more often to have tornadoes occur.
The Waco tornado from 1953 was a category F5 — the most intense category — meaning it ran across all of Waco killing 114 people and leaving 597 injured. The tornado from April 26 was identified as a multi-vortex tornado.
“Climate model projections indicate that convective available potential energy — a measure of the amount of energy available for convection — would increase in a warmer climate leading to more frequent environments favorable to severe thunderstorms in the United States,” Climate Signals website says.
Dr. Trey Cade, director of the Baylor Institute for Air Science and certified weather forecaster, said studies have shown that increasing average temperatures can affect the number of tornadoes and how strong they can be.
“This is a slight effect that would be seen in long-term statistical trends, not attributable to individual events,” Cade said.
Due to research supporting the theory, Cade said Tornado Alley is shifting east, resulting in a decrease in storms. He said it is impossible to predict if another tornado is the size of the disaster in 1953.
“Because we are in a generally favorable location for tornado development, there’s the potential for a tornado of that size to occur in any given year,” Cade said. “About the best we can do is a few days out see that the right ingredients are coming together for a tornado outbreak in a certain region and there is a significant risk there.”
