🍂🌪️ The Tides Are Turning, Slowly

The jet stream is starting a trend of appearing over the C/S Plains more often.

I know this sounds ridiculous if you live in Texas or Oklahoma — but the jet stream is beginning (albeit slowly) that march south that happens in the autumn.

Please don’t throw hot tomatoes at me.

That ridge is still firmly over the Southern Plains, no doubt, but stronger jet stream winds, including meaningful SW flow, are dipping as far south as Colorado and Kansas.

I think this is a sign of what we’ve already been seeing: a slow uptick in severe storm activity further south. The Fall season typically happens in reverse to the Spring season, with the activity starting north in August/September before migrating south by November. Typically, activity is more sparse on the back end of the season, but we can have some really big years.

Additionally, there is some evidence that warmer global temperatures will lead to more ‘off-calendar’ tornado events. I think you can already see some of this in tornado counts, with Oklahoma seeing above-average fall activity in five of the past seven years.