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This poll question came about in a funny way. My g/f is originally from Colorado and lived for quite a while, in Michigan. She is also veteran (U.S. Navy WAVE).
The other day we were talking and I mentioned that it looked like we might have a "bad" storm season coming up because of a cold winter. I used to "chase" storms a bit...
One thing lead to another and she insisted Michigan is part of "Tornado Alley". I told her she was out of her damn mind. That while certain states in the upper Midwest get their share of tornadoes, they are not in the ballpark with the Southern/Central Plains states.
We agreed to let those on here settle it. My own definition of Tornado Alley in terms of whole states are: Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa. Arkansas, Missouri, and South Dakota.
The "Heart of Tornado Alley is northern Texas, most of Oklahoma and southern and central Kansas.
Well Canada has at least one "tornado alley" running from Windsor up through the middle of southern Ontario.
Windsor is just across the river from Detriot.
I would suspect that for Michigan's latitude, the southern part gets a fair bit of tornados.
Places like Pennsylvannia and New York probably not so much.
I think tornados are scarce in New England.
Tornado's seem the worst west of the Appalachians and somewhere east of the Rockies.
Georgia and South Carolina have a fair number of twisters.
North Carolina to a lesser extent while Alabama and Mississippi more so.
But head to Virginia and tornado's become scarce. (looking at tornado stats )
So I would say north of North Carolina along the eastern seaboard is also not "tornado alley".
Factoring in very-low probability of damaging natural disasters,
eastern-Virginia is probably one of the nicest "sub-tropical" climates in the USA.
I could see myself enjoying living somewhere between Richmond and Virginia Beach.
You nailed it! According to NOAA and every other list out there, those are the states. I read an interesting article by a chaser saying that tornado alley should be adjusted each year because of the weather variances year to year.
Here is a map showing F3 to F5 tornados from 1950 to 1998. I don't know how much different this map would look if it included F0 to F2 tornados, but it shows many active areas instead of one large region.
Minnesota can get tornados, but due to us being so far north, our tornado season is much shorter than states to the south.
^^ I think I heard of an F5tornado touching down a few years ago in Ely, Manitoba, which is just south of Winnipeg, not far from the US border and perhaps Minnesota. This was Canada's worst tornado in terms of strength.
I've always considered it to be TX, OK, KS, NE, IA, MO. But I have friends from close to, but outside of that area (like Louisiana and Illinois) that definitely consider themselves to be part of it. I guess the broadest definition would be everything between the Rocky Mountain front and the western slope of the Appalachians, with frequency decreasing somewhat at the N and W fringes of that area.
There is also what's nicknamed "Dixie Alley" - that streak of higher tornado activity that starts around Houston, cuts across LA, MS, AL, GA, the Carolinas, and ends up around tidewater VA, and the frequency drops off quite a bit once you get into NC and especially VA. But it seems that most of the big SE outbreaks all seem to track somewhere along that line, slowly running out of gas (usually) the farther east they get. Not as generally active as the true "tornado alley", but still, some very notorious outbreaks.
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