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ILLINOIS HAS ALREADY HAD 100 TORNADOES  
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Adriana Pérez, Chicago Tribune, TNS
July 19, 2024
Governing
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_ On Monday, July 15, Chicago issued 16 tornado warnings, the most
sent on a single day since 2004. In an average year, the state only
experiences 50 tornadoes annually. But as the air becomes more humid,
tornadoes will become more common. _

Illinois tornado: 7 tornadoes confirmed in DeKalb, Kane counties ,
ABC7

 

On Monday, the National Weather Service in Chicago issued 16 tornado
warnings
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— the most they’ve sent out on a single day since 2004. The office
confirmed that at least 28 tornadoes swept across
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northern Illinois and northwest Indiana on Sunday and Monday night as
peak wind gusts reached more than 100 mph
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Illinois has already experienced over 100 tornadoes this year, though
the state typically averages 50 tornadoes
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annually.

This is likely because the air in the Midwest is becoming more
saturated with humidity, a key ingredient of strong thunderstorms that
can produce tornadoes. As climate change intensifies, so do favorable
conditions [[link removed]] for
this kind of severe weather that has cost billions of dollars in
recent years.

Monday’s tornadoes were part of a derecho
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long-lived storm with damaging winds. It is a common Midwest
phenomenon with roughly one happening every year. But the caliber of
this derecho is generally only seen once every five to 10 years, said
Brett Borchardt, a meteorologist with the weather service’s office
in Chicago. Most recently in August 2020, a similarly “ferocious”
derecho downed trees and rattled windows from Iowa to Chicago and
caused $11 billion in damages
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While there are no specific temperature requirements for tornadoes to
form, the air close to the ground needs to be warm and moist in
relation to cooler, drier air higher up in the atmosphere. So
increasingly humid summers will likely lead to intensified tornado
seasons. But observations also indicate tornadoes are happening more
often
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during nontraditional tornado months as winters become warmer and more
humid.

Leading up to the heavy downpours and outbreak of tornadoes that hit
Illinois earlier this week, a big dome of hot, moist air fueled storm
clusters that led to four or five episodes in 48 to 60 hours.

“That’s pretty busy,” Borchardt said. “That’s a lot of
storms in a short amount of time.”

Rising average temperatures globally increase humidity; for every
increase of 1.8 degrees, the atmosphere can hold 7 percent more water
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Higher temperatures also speed up a process called evapotranspiration,
by which plants such as corn absorb water through their roots and
release it as water vapor.

In the Midwest, as healthy corn matures in the summertime, it acts
“like a faucet” releasing moisture into the atmosphere and causing
more frequent and intense rains, Borchardt said. According to the U.S.
Geological Survey
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1 acre of corn can release 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of water each day as
“corn sweat.” For context, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
reported 11.2 million acres of corn
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were planted in Illinois in 2023.

By the end of the century, the warming climate will also increase the
frequency of supercells — the strong, rotating thunderstorms that
can produce tornadoes.

Last year, eight of nine weather events that affected Illinois and
cost billions
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were all severe storms with what Illinois State Climatologist Trent
Ford has previously called “different flavors,” including large
hail, high winds and tornadoes.

So far this year, more than 1,400 tornadoes have been reported
preliminarily across the United States. The average since 2010 for
this time of year is 997 tornadoes, according to AccuWeather
meteorologists,
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making 2024 the second most active year since 1950 after 2,250 were
reported in 2011.

Not all tornadoes come from supercell storms. For instance, after
making landfall in early July
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Hurricane Beryl not only left millions of Texans without power, but
according to meteorologists, also prolifically produced tornadoes all
the way
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to upstate New York.

However, Borchardt said that the remnants of Beryl had “long
passed” by the point of Sunday and Monday’s storms in Illinois.

Even if recent tornadoes were not directly related to Hurricane Beryl,
the moisture that accumulated in the air and led to recent storms most
likely was. And as climate change heats ocean temperatures, it adds
more fuel to hurricanes, whose impacts can reverberate farther across
the country.

“The warm ocean temperatures make it more likely that a hurricane
will grow into a big storm, a powerful storm,” said Andrew Pershing,
vice president for science at Climate Central. “And then it means
that when the remnants come on land, that they’re going to be
carrying more moisture, more energy, and have the potential to create
more flooding, create more severe weather.”

Tornadoes spun by tropical storms form and act differently than the
supercell, long-track tornadoes the Plains and Midwest often see that
can travel 50 to 200 continuous miles, according to AccuWeather. When
a hurricane produces tornadoes, these are fast-moving and short-lived
but can still be powerfully damaging.

Yet Beryl was just the start. It was a Category 5 storm, which
meteorologists say is unusually strong this early into the Atlantic
hurricane season
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that tends to peak in mid- to late August. So tropical storms might
still influence this tornado season.

Ford, the state climatologist, said the recent storms and tornadoes
indicate that future severe weather will continue to affect
increasingly larger swaths of the population.

“We need to be ready for severe weather and tornadoes, no matter
where we live in the state,” he said.

* Climate Change
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* Illinois
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* tornadoes
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