More Tornadoes? Record December For Twisters And More Possible Today, And Later This Month

Tornado damage in Minnesota after the unprecedented
severe weather outbreak on December 15. Minnesota
had never seen tornadoes in December until this
year, contributing to a record tornado count in'
the United States this month. 

 December is usually a pretty slow month for tornadoes in the United States, but anyone who's glanced at the news knows there's surely been a lot of them this month. 

There have been at minimum 130 tornadoes so far this month in the United States, which is the most on record for December since at least 1950.

Today, more tornadoes are possible in Florida.

A storm coming off the Gulf of Mexico today will cross roughly west to east through the Florida peninsula. There's a good deal of spin and instability in the atmosphere with this thing. That has prompted NOAA's Storm Prediction Center to say there's a chance of tornadoes today in central and southern Florida. 

The biggest threat from the severe thunderstorms expected today in Florida will contain damaging straight line winds. But expected supercells could spin up a tornado or two.  A tornado watch was already in effect before dawn in southwestern Florida. 

Florida does get tornadoes from time to time, most often during the winter. 

As a side note, the storm causing the rough weather in Florida will rocket northward well off the East Coast, and cause a snowstorm with some ice Wednesday night and Thursday morning in Maine and the maritime provinces of Canada. The storm will have little or no effects here in Vermont).

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service in LaCrosse, Wisconsin says they were able to document 18 tornadoes in the weird Upper Midwest tornado outbreak on Dec. 15. Four of them were in Wisconsin, five of them were in Iowa and nine were found in Minnesota.

Note that until this month, the total number of tornadoes ever recorded in Minnesota was zero.  Most of the December 15 tornadoes were rather weak, being rated at EF-0 or EF-1. There were three EF-2s in Wisconsin.

After today, we still might not be done with tornadoes this month in the United States. Another wave of near record breaking warmth, and unusually high humidity is expected to engulf the southeastern United States from now probably through the week after Christmas.  This could even last into the first few days of 2022.

Meanwhile, very cold air will lurk in the northwestern United States.  It's possible this set up could create more volatile weather in the South during this time, including the risk of more tornadoes. It's very, very questionable exactly how this will play out. Maybe we'll get lucky and the ingredients won't come together for any severe weather. 

Then again, maybe it will. It's something to watch.

Hate to say it, but climate change might have influence the number of tornadoes the United States experienced this month.

Warm, humid air is one of the key ingredients for tornadoes. If the air is warmer and more humid than it otherwise would be, that adds more energy to the atmosphere, making tornadoes more likely.

That's not to say every December going forward will have a lot of tornadoes. You need the right weather patterns to draw the heat and humidity into the U.S., And you need strong storm systems taking paths that would encourage severe weather. That, of course, doesn't always happen.