Are twisters the new normal in New Jersey?

11 tornadoes this year [2021] are state's second highest

By: Jim Beckerman
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... The scene was familiar. The setting was not.
..... "Ma! It's a tornado!" "There is is!" "Oh my God, that's definitely a tornado. Oh my God, I'm shaking!"
..... It was a scene, complete with pointing fingers and awestruck voices, that we've seen in a dozen movies, from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Twister." Only this was happening, not in rural Kansas or Oklahoma, but in Mullica Hill, Gloucester County.
..... A huge black wedge of a funnel cloud plowed its way through South Jersey early Wednesday [09/01/2021] evening, as awestruck bystanders recored it on their iPhones. the storm, one of several spawned by Ida in her rampage through the state, is said to have destroyed tow dozen homes and damaged 100 more. A second tornado was widely seen - and photographed - in Burlington County, crossing the Burlington-Bristol Bridge.
..... So weird that the footage is not in tornado alley," said John Emm, in a social media post, commenting on the Mullica Hill twister.
..... Exactly. And as a mater of fact, New Jersey has had an unusual number of tornadoes this summer. [2021] Almost a record number: 11. That;s the second highest number since 1950 (the record, set in 1989 was 19).
..... But it's not just the number of tornadoes, but the severity of them, that has been unusual.
..... The Mullica Hill event is still being investigated, but David Robinson, New Jersey's state climatologist, believes it must have been at least an EF3, if not an EF4. the Enhanced Fujitascale, adopted in 2007, rates tornadoes from 0 to 5: EF# being "Severe damage." EF4 being "Devastating Damage" and EF5 being "incredible Damage." The one that touched down in Gloucester County was no small fry. If it was an EF4, it will be New Jersey's first on record.
..... "They wouldn't smirk at that one in Oklahoma," Robinson said.
..... As every child remembers from grade school, tornadoes from when warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico collides with - and roils up - cold dry air from Canada.
..... That collision happens most frequently in the spring, in the so-called "tornado alley" states of the Midwest United States.
..... But that doesn't happen elsewhere. A 1953 tornado in Worcester, Massachusetts, killed 94 and injuries 1,300. An 1835 tornado in New Brunswick caused $300,000 in damage ( $7.5 million in today;s money).

Small fry

..... That said, most tornadoes in places like New Jersey are pipsqueaks compared to the monsters they get in the Plains states.
..... "The kind of tornadoes we get are the dinky pop-and-skip tornadoes, where in the Midwest they're on the ground for miles and miles," said Bob Ziff spokesman for the North Jersey Weather Observers.
..... "The tornadoes we get will pop down, take the top off a chimney, then go back up," Ziff said. "And then a couple of blocks late, it will go back down and feast on the awning of a house."
..... In New Jersey, these pint-pot tornadoes are often not even recognized as such when they happen. No one spots a funnel cloud, or points in awe to swirling debris. It's only afterwards, when meteorologists assess the damage, that they sometimes can detect a telltale circular pattern.
..... "There will be a tree knocked down pointing south on one spot, you go another block and it;s pointing southeast, and then you go another block and it's pointing east," Ziff said. "So you can see from block to block there's a counter-clockwise pattern of damage."
..... But there was no mistaking one that came down in Mullica Hill Wednesday. [09/01/2021] "That was a wow," Robinson said.
..... Are tornadoes happening more frequently on New Jersey these days? If so, are they related p as so many things seem to be these days - to climate-change?
..... Not so fast, Robinson says. Heat waves, floods, and other weather-related disasters can be plausibly linked to what's going on in the climate. But tornadoes - fierce as they may be - are small, localized storms. And they are mostly related to a particular weather pattern in a particular place on a particular day.
..... "Weather varies, and weather varies naturally," he said. "No one would jump in here and say this is an example of climate change."
..... The large numbers of tornadoes in our area this summer [2021] has more to do with the three large tropical storms that happen to plow through her in July, august and September [2021] - Elsa (July 8 and 9). Fred (August 16-17) and Ida. Hurricanes and other such storms often spawn tornadoes.
..... "The weather has just been more turbulent or dynamic over New Jersey this summer," [2021] Robinson said.
..... In recent years, the tally of Jersey twisters has varied widely. There were four confirmed New Jersey tornadoes in 2019; 0 in 2018; 2 apiece in 2017 and 2016; and 0 in 2014 and 2015.
..... "There;s really no particular rhyme or reason," Robinson said. "We went for a couple of straight years without a tornado in the last decade. And if you look at the late 1980s and early 1990s we had a fair number of tornadoes."

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