Tornadoes Near Houston Wrecks Homes, Part Of "Second Tornado Season"

Menacing clouds about to put down a tornado 
yesterday near Klein, Texas. 

Tornadoes swept through suburbs northwest of Houston Monday, leaving homes smushed under trees, roofs ripped up and walls collapsed. 

Surprisingly and luckily, nobody was seriously injured.  Other severe storms also swept through other parts of the South. A couple more tornadoes might spin up around Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia today. 

Peak tornado season is usually in the spring and early summer.  Very muggy, warm air flows north that time of year, it flows into large storms, collides with colder air from the north, and you get tornado outbreaks. 

The jet stream screaming over the U.S. adds energy for these tornadoes. 

Tornado season fades over the summer because the storms that add the kind of spin in the air that you need for a swarms of twisters. The jet stream retreats into Canada. If you don't strong storms and not much spin, you don't get many tornadoes. 

Right now, there is a second tornado season going on. You wouldn't think so, given that the forces of winter are taking over. Tornadoes don't like cold air, so why are there tornadoes spinning down there.

But now that we're into the cold season, we can get strong storms again. The jet stream is now back down in the United States. That can generate nice strong storms. The kind that add spin to the air.  The kind that can pull warm, muggy air out of the Gulf of Mexico. The kind that can manufacture tornadoes. 

Of course, the late autumn early winter tornado season isn't anything like you'd get in the spring. That warm, humid air can't make much headway. Not with all that Arctic air coming down from the Great White North of Canada. 

So, you can get November and December tornadoes. 

Here's another twist, pardon the pun, since we're talking about tornadoes, the second twister season might be getting worse, thanks to climate change. 

Remember that sticky, yucky hot air that tornadoes need? Climate change is allowing bigger surges of that air that can penetrate further north. That can lead to more widespread cold season tornadoes. 

November is now on average Alabama's third busiest tornado, even busier than May, the Washington Post informs us.  March and April, and November are Alabama's big twister months. In tornado alley November is Oklahoma's fourth busiest twister month.

Throughout history there have been deadly tornado outbreaks in the final two months of the year. But trend lines might be getting worse. 

An example of our stormy late year future might be December, 2021. A tornado outbreak killed more than 80 people in the southeastern United States on Dec. 10-11 of that year. One of those tornadoes basically leveled the city of Mayfield, Kentucky. 

Just days later, on December 15, 2021, a massive derecho with a swarm of 120 tornadoes, including 63 in Iowa alone.  

As for this year, the next chance of severe weather after today will run in the South this weekend and early next week. It's too soon to tell how extensive the bad weather will become, if it develops at all. 

VIDEO

Firefighters on a call in Cyr Fair, Texas take shelter in a home's garage as an apparent tornado passes very close by. Note the sudden wind shift halfway through the video. Video is from a camera on a firetruck. Click on this link to view, or if you see the link below, click on that.