OKLAHOMA CITY — Forecasters say a wetter- than-usual winter and a jet stream ripping over the part of the country known as “Tornado Alley” could lead to an active spring — perhaps starting with the strong twister that nicked a small western Oklahoma town Monday night.
“It’s time to get ready,” Michelann Ooten of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said Tuesday as she surveyed damage from a storm that destroyed five homes and tore the roofs off several others in Hammon.
The nation typically will see 70 to 100 tornadoes by early March, but only 42 had been reported until Monday night’s Oklahoma tornado. There was only one tornado nationwide in February.
In the short term, storms will be generated and fueled by the usual tornado trigger — Gulf of Mexico moisture colliding with storm systems driven by the jet stream.
In a few months, parts of the Great Plains that had above-normal precipitation during the winter could see storms fueled by the moisture stored within plants and the ground.
Monday’s twister occurred when a low-pressure system in the Pacific Northwest kicked a strong storm system out of the Rocky Mountains and into the southern plains.
Last year, 1,156 tornadoes were reported nationwide and 21 people were killed by tornadoes, according to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
