Winter Tornadoes | The Coldest Tornadoes of the Year
Winter tornadoes happen in the coldest months of December, January, and February. Learn more about them here…
Winter tornadoes can be very dangerous, just like tornadoes at any other time of year. Some think that because they are happening “out-of-season”, they are not as intense, and do not take proper precautions. This can cause some safety hazards, and a few notable outbreaks of tornadoes have been record-setting. Learn more about them here…
This post is all about winter tornadoes.
Ruinous Winter Tornadoes
Can Tornadoes Happen in the Winter?
The first section of this post will be about the rarity of winter tornadoes. Every winter has tornadoes, with early climatological winter being part of the second lesser-known tornado season. Some winters have more tornadoes than others, and others are more intense. For example, on December 10, 2021, a major tornado outbreak occurred during the meteorological winter and was a record-breaking one. The outbreak itself made the winter tornado season a record-breaking one.
Winter Tornado Outbreaks
9% of all major tornado outbreaks annually happen during the winter. Because of such cold conditions across the country at the time, major freezing precipitation accompanies the main low-pressure system 80% of the time. Winter tornadoes often happen in the Midwest, all the way down to the Gulf-of-Mexico states. Two main types of set-ups happen for these cold tornado outbreaks, one targeting the Great Lakes & Northern Great Plains, and the other targeting the southeastern states.1
Though somewhat uncommon throughout the winter, when the twisters come together with the right ingredients, the outbreaks can be really big. Some examples, as previously mentioned, can be the December 10, 2021 outbreak, the December 15-16, 2021 tornado outbreak, and the Super Tuesday 2008 outbreak that had some violent tornadoes in populated areas in Tennessee. Fall tornado outbreaks can also pack the same punch as winter ones. Learn more about them here.
Tornado During Snowstorm
Tornadoes during snowstorms are not that common, even though the large-scale systems that produce the snowstorms can also produce tornadoes, which is pretty common. Whenever there is a large center of low pressure, causing severe weather across the U.S., there are different sides to it. The “cold side” of the pressure system can produce snow, which is typically behind and maybe a bit north of it. But the part with a prontal boundary often ignites severe weather setups, and might even cause tornadoes.
Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak
One example of a winter tornado outbreak is the Super Tuesday Outbreak 2008. This outbreak was notable because it happened, as the name suggests when many political events happened around Super Tuesday. The outbreak happened on February 5th, with the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, OK issuing a high risk for much of the Lower Mississippi Valley. For tornadoes, there was a 30% hatched risk issued by the SPC, which means that any given point in the area has a 30% chance of a tornado within 25 miles of that location. The hatched means that significant tornadoes are also likely in the area.
High risks are rare, especially in February, with the last February high risk up to that point being in 1998. So the actual outbreak produced many intense to violent tornadoes in the states of AR, KY, TN, MS, & AL.2 There were 5 EF3 and 5 EF4 tornadoes that happened on that day, with all the tornadoes causing 57 fatalities. This outbreak is a big discussion in the weather communities because there are few other tornado outbreaks of this intensity in this season.
- spc.noaa.gov/publications/galway/winter.pdf ↩︎
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Super_Tuesday_tornado_outbreak#Meteorological_synopsis ↩︎
