Tornadoes milder in '05

[TexasStooge]

With 102 twisters and no deaths, it's calmest year in nearly 2 decades

By PAULA LAVIGNE / The Dallas Morning News

About four times this year, Bob Jones packed his ham radio, flashlights, binoculars and foul-weather gear into his Ford Explorer and headed off to a grocery store parking lot in Richardson.

He watched the clouds — lots of them — but never saw a twister drop.

Mr. Jones wasn't the only storm spotter keeping an eye on the slow season.

Texas tornadoes barely topped 100 in 2005, making this the calmest count in almost 20 years for the spiraling storms.

As of mid-December, there were 102 tornadoes statewide, two injuries and no deaths, according to reports submitted by the state's National Weather Service offices. That's the lowest number of tornadoes since 1988, when 89 twisters dropped down.

In a year when weather tragedies — mostly from hurricanes Katrina and Rita — grabbed the public's attention, tornado totals were down nationwide as well.

Nationally, weather officials estimate 1,014 tornadoes in 2005, slightly lower than average, said Daniel McCarthy, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. There were have been 38 tornado-related deaths, which is slightly more than last year but lower than the 10-year average.

Not only were there fewer twisters this year, but they were mostly weak and did little damage, say federal weather officials.

“The only substantial damage report we had was a TV antenna bent over * and some tree limbs,” said warning coordination meteorologist Gary Woodall with the National Weather Service office in Fort Worth. He referred to tornadoes that touched down in April near south Fort Worth and Mansfield.

In North Texas, which averages about 26 tornadoes annually, only 10 were recorded this year. They were all F0 — the lowest level on the Fujita Tornado Scale — with wind speeds between 40 and 72 miles per hour.

The spring storm season spun out in North Texas primarily because cold, high-pressure fronts pushing through the Great Plains and into the Gulf of Mexico cut off the return of low-level warm, moist air into the area, Mr. Woodall said.

Upper-level storm systems and strong winds passed through the region, but without that “rich, muggy, juicy air” from the gulf, they just kept on moving, he said.

Mr. Jones, a storm spotter for almost three decades, said his pager went off only about four times this year, whereas he's usually called up 10 to 12 times. The 69-year-old Sachse ham radio operator said the thunderstorms that passed through caused some minor damage but didn't have the right mix to produce tornadoes.

“We did see some rotation at one time, but it soon dissipated,” he said.

He wasn't disappointed, though.

“You hate to see tornadoes move through your community because nothing good comes from a tornado,” he said. “I visited Wichita Falls the day after the tornado hit there in 1979, and I have never seen such destruction in my life.”

The tornado that made headlines this year was an early-morning storm that hit Evansville, Ind., in November. It killed 24 people.

Although that storm was severe, it was in the middle of the scale, an F3 on the Fujita Scale. According to preliminary data, not a single more devastating tornado, F4 or F5, touched down in 2005, Mr. McCarthy said.

“We may have gone through a whole year” without any violent tornadoes,” without any of the top-level tornadoes, he said. “That is extraordinary.”

There were signs along the way that 2005 would be a quiet year, especially when there were only 155 tornadoes in May. The last two years have been closer to 500, Mr. McCarthy said.

“There was not one tornado reported in Oklahoma [in May],” he said. “That never happens. If that's not a sign of drought, I don't know what is.”

So, if black skies didn't cloud 2005, does that mean 2006 will be just as tranquil?

“It doesn't mean a thing,” Mr. McCarthy said. “Tornadoes are such a day-to-day thing.”

The science of tracking climate patterns and tornado formation is in its infancy, and there's no established link between global temperature fluctuations such as El Niño with the number or strength of tornadoes, he said. Tornadoes are unlike hurricanes, where tests of water temperature and circulation can indicate what type of season to expect, he said.

There's no way to tell in January how many tornadoes to expect in May, or to tell in June what to expect in November.

“It just takes the right conditions at the right time,” he said.

And it's the luck of the draw where a tornado might hit.

Two tornadoes touched down in the Houston area just last week, but did not (((DEC. 14))) cause any substantial damage.

One of Texas' most severe storms of 2005 hit the ground about 45 miles northeast of Lubbock on June 9.

It dragged on for 10 miles, destroying a grain elevator and irrigation systems. It caused more than $200,000 in property damage and more than $70 million ((((CQ))) in crop damage.

If the Dallas-Fort Worth took a direct hit from a storm like that or stronger, up to 1,000 people could be killed, especially if it happened during daytime or early evening, said

Martin Lisius, chairman of the nonprofit Texas Severe Storms Association in Arlington, worries that people will develop apathy toward tornadoes if they go through more years like 2005.

Yet Dallas-Fort Worth is the largest metropolitan area in Tornado Alley, he said. North Texans should learn a lesson from the nonchalance many Gulf residents had toward hurricanes before this year, he said.

“The biggest, deadliest, meanest, nastiest tornadoes in the world occur in the Oklahoma and north-central Texas area,” he said. “If people think that we don't get very many tornadoes around here, they are going to be in for a big surprise someday. Maybe even next year.”