Tornado Alley: Home Of Extreme Winds

Short Wave

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🗓️ 2 April 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Each year, the United States has about 1,200 tornadoes. Many of them happen in tornado alley, a very broad swath of the U.S. that shifts seasonally. This area gets at least ten times more tornadoes than the rest of the world. Science writer Sushmita Pathak says that huge difference can be chalked up to one word: geography. But there's a slice of South America with similar geographical features that gets comparatively fewer tornadoes, so what gives? Sushmita wades into the research weeds with guest host Berly McCoy, one of Short Wave's producers.

Read Sushmita's full article on tornadoes that she wrote for the publication Eos.

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Transcript

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0:16.6	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:21.6	Hey, shortwavers, producer Burley McCoy and the host chair today.
0:25.7	So every couple of years when I was growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri,
0:29.6	my family and I would gather in our basement, not for a party or game night, but to take cover from a potential tornado.
0:38.4	As a kid living around Tornado Alley, I thought this was normal.
0:43.0	If you're unfamiliar, Tornado Alley is just a seasonally shifting section of the U.S.
0:47.2	that gets a high level of tornadoes.
0:49.6	But I later learn that people who live outside of this area don't experience nearly the same amount of
0:55.5	tornadoes. It is really the global hotspot of tornadoes. That's Sushmina Partak, a freelance science
1:02.6	journalist who wrote about the science of tornadoes for the publication EOS. And she says,
1:07.7	the reason this region has at least 10 times more tornadoes than any other place in the world is clear.
1:14.3	You have to blame geography for that.
1:17.4	So tornadoes form from thunderstorms.
1:20.3	And for them to do that, different types of winds need to blow at different temperatures in different directions.
1:26.9	You need cold, dry air coming in from one direction.
1:30.1	Like from the Rocky Mountains.
1:31.7	You need warm, humid air coming in from one direction.
	...

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