Pirate's Cove

We used to just call this “weather.” Now, every time a storm happens the “news” media has to wonder whether these are signs of doom due to newspapers delivering their tree killing editions in fossil fueled vehicles. First up, the NYC paper with a virulent racist on its editorial board

Tornadoes on the East Coast May Be a Sign of Things to Come

A tornado, albeit a weak one, touched down in New York City last Thursday, in the College Point neighborhood of Queens. A few days earlier, a stronger tornado was spotted near the town of Douglas, in central Massachusetts. And a few days later a whirlwind ripped through nearby Webster, displacing dozens of people from their damaged homes.

The storms were far from the region in the middle of the country known as Tornado Alley, where the bulk of the nation’s tornadoes occur. In a summer already marked by simmering heat that researchers have linked to global warming, is climate change also making tornadoes more common in places where they once were infrequent?

Though individual weather events are distinct from the more broadly changing climate, global warming does influence weather patterns. Still, any link between climate change and the frequency of tornadoes is far from straightforward, according to researchers.

First, the point was made that this is out of the ordinary, despite the fact that summer is typically a time when tornadic activity tends to move to the east coast. Tornado Alley is more of a spring and fall thing. Did writer Kendra Pierre-Louis know this or do any research, or did she just impart what she thought was Science because she heard the phrase “Tornado Alley” and ran with it? Regardless, the point here is to fear monger early on before people moved on to other stories while tweeting about how east coast tornadoes are signs of climate change doom, thinking they never ever happened prior.

In fact, if you read the rest of the article, you’ll find out that scientists really have no clue, though you have a few that attempt to impart opinion without actual scientific fact.

And then

Does climate change contribute to severe hailstorms in Colorado?

Monday’s hailstorm and two earlier this summer in Colorado Springs and southern El Paso County were part of what atmospheric scientists are calling an “active” but not unusual year for hail events.

“This is a more active year than normal, but convective storms in July and August are not totally out of the ordinary,” said Katja Friedrich, an associate professor in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “It is still an unfortunate event with repercussions, though, because of the damage at places like the zoo.”

In fact, despite some squishy writing, the answer is somewhere between “probably not and we have not a clue.” Good for writer Liz Forster for starting out with an attempt to tell all those who freaked out about the round of hail and blamed ‘climate change’ that they need to just calm down and take a chill pill. Because people did freak. Hail, and tornadoes, have always been around.

https://twitter.com/WilliamTeach/status/1026969898566737920

And, even if there is an uptick during a warm period (and what happens during cool periods?), there is no proof that this is mostly/solely caused by Mankind.