Tornado Trends

Dive into the swirling world of tornado trends in Illinois with our latest podcast episode. Join us as we explore how a tornado forms, the recent patterns of tornado occurrences in the Prairie State, and what you can do to improve your resiliency to tornado hazards.  Come away with a deeper understanding of this powerful natural phenomenon.

Learn more!
Tornado Trends (blog article)
Is Illinois a part of a new tornado alley? (blog article)
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Check out our Naturalist News blog

Questions?
Abigail Garofalo [e-mail]
Erin Garrett [e-mail]
Amy Lefringhouse [e-mail]

Creators & Guests

Host

Abigail Garofalo

As an Educator focusing on Natural Resources, Abigail Garofalo provides training and education to Cook County residents so that they can better utilize the natural benefits the environment has to offer in an urban environment. As an educator, she addresses environmental issues in the area and works on creating a culture of environmentalism through community building. Her background is in environmental outreach and interpretation through experiences with several summer camps, park districts, and the Morton Arboretum. Abigail is responsible for environmental programming in Cook County with an emphasis on conservation landscape programming and environmental education.

Host

Amy Lefringhouse

Amy Lefringhouse serves as Natural Resources, Environment, and Energy Educator for communities in Adams, Brown, Pike, Hancock, and Schuyler counties. West-central Illinois offers so many natural gifts to ponder, enjoy, and explore – the changing seasons, two major river networks that mark the borders and are the very heartbeat of the area, and an unfathomable amount of flora and fauna with which we coexist. From the tiniest speck of soil to the stars shining above, Amy is passionate about revealing these natural wonders to local communities.

What is Spotlight on Natural Resources?

Everyday Environment delves into the intricate web of connections that bind us to the natural world. From water, air, energy, plants, and animals to the complex interactions within these elements, we aim to unravel the ties that link us to our environment. Through a variety of educational formats, including podcasts, blogs, and videos, we strive to foster a deeper understanding of these connections among the residents of Illinois.

Hosted by: Abigail Garofalo, Amy Lefringhouse, and Erin Garrett

Abigail Garofalo: 00:11

Welcome to another episode of spotlight on natural resources where we shine some light on what's going on in our environment. I'm your host, Abigail Garfalo,

Amy Lefringhouse: 00:20

And I'm your cohost, Amy Lefringhouse.

Abigail Garofalo: 00:23

And today, we are here with Duane Friend, Climate Specialist and Master Naturalist Coordinator with Illinois Extension, and we are here, to chat about tornado trends. Welcome, Duane.

Duane Friend: 00:35

Thanks for having me on today.

Abigail Garofalo: 00:37

Yeah. I'm excited. It's definitely getting to be that season. We all have some questions. We all want to learn a little bit more about this crazy weather phenomenon. And you are our weather guy so I'm excited to ask you more. And let's just start with the basics. What are the key characteristics and features of tornadoes? Well, there's a number

Duane Friend: 00:59

Well there is a number of different characteristics. And, really, in terms of the big question, what makes a tornado happen? We don't really have that complete answer yet. And I think what they're finding out and what actually makes sense is that there's not one mechanism out there that really creates that tornado. There's a number of different things out there. But if we wanna talk about some of the basics in terms of what what makes some of that rotation occur, we can start with the small stuff like the, the things that are called land spouts, gustnadoes, water spouts, those kind of things. And really that's caused by, you know, if everybody has probably seen a dust devil at at some point in their life.

Abigail Garofalo: 01:39

To clarify, the dust devil is where, like, there's just, like, the little bit of spinning dust that, like, kinda comes up. Is that what you're talking about?

Duane Friend: 01:46

Yeah. It's it's forming at the ground. It's because of that, daytime heating. We usually see this in the springtime, And we get that air rising, but the air at the lower especially in the lower levels of the atmosphere is very turbulent. So even though that air is trying to rise, there are winds next to it that gives it a spin.

Duane Friend: 02:07

And so you get these these dust devils, these land spouts, water spouts, essentially kind of the same thing. You've got air that's rising up. There may be a a storm close by, but it's a very narrow area where that air is rising, and it gets that spin going. These things may go up several 1000 feet, but it's more of a ground level thing. When we look at some of the larger tornadoes, when we start talking about, you know, F2, F3, up to F5 tornadoes, the most almost all of those are things that are occurring thousands of feet up to get that formation started.

Duane Friend: 02:44

And a lot of times, especially with the really strong tornadoes, the EF 3 to EF 5 tornadoes, what you have with those types of, tornadoes is a particular type of thunderstorm called a supercell. These thunderstorms, one cell by itself can be 5 to 15 miles wide. The whole thunderstorm is already slowly rotating. Within that, then you can get an area where you've got very rapid air moving into it several 1000 feet off the ground, say, half a mile or more up off the ground. And a lot of times, this air can be very juicy, warm, warm and have a lot of water vapor in it.

Duane Friend: 03:23

As that air comes in and then starts rising up, then you can get rotation within that rotation of the thunderstorm. And if it gets concentrated enough, it's just kind of the same ideas, if you take, a container of water or any kind of liquid, spin it really fast, and then you start to see that that funnel in middle of that come down. And that's kinda what happens with these really large tornadoes. And so you get that type of mechanism occurring. Now one other way that a tornado can form is with, a squall line, where you have this line of thunderstorms, and we think of it looking like one big storm, but it's actually individual thunderstorm cells all moving kinda side by side.

Duane Friend: 04:07

One of the things that happens with that is that line of thunderstorms starts to bow out kind of in the middle, and it's called the if it's if you saw it on a radar, it's called the bow echo. So as the ends of that kind of bend around on the ends of those, then you get air swirling around on either end of it.

Abigail Garofalo: 04:27

You say it bows out? I'm picturing, like, the inside moves forward or the outsides are moving forward without the inside? I'm trying to picture - like a concave or ?

Duane Friend: 04:37

Kinda like a kinda like a, bow for a bow and arrow. So that middle part is out farther than the ends. And so the ends are more inward and where that inward occurrence is happening, that's where you get that rotation. So you can get tornadoes there. They're typically not super strong, but with any type of rotation like that, if it's strong enough, you can have a funnel coming down.

Duane Friend: 05:01

One other thing I would would mention is for that super cell development, typically, you you have what's called a dry line, where that, type of thunderstorm will occur, and that's something that you don't often see on regular weather maps. You won't see it a lot of times on, your your local TV forecast in most cases. And a lot of times, it's not even mentioned. But what that is is 2 different types of air. They're both warm, but one is really warm and doesn't have a lot of water vapor in there. It doesn't have a lot of humidity. And the other one is really warm and juicy. And what happens is that that really hot and dry air will be over the top of that warm and juicy air. And as long as that cap is there, it doesn't allow that warm wet air to rise up. It acts like a cap.

Duane Friend: 05:54

And that's why it's called the dry line. It's still a boundary between 2 air masses, but, as long as that cap is there, you don't have thunderstorms. But what happens at a lot of times is these things are being squeezed together, and eventually, that warm, juicy air can punch through that cap. And once that happens, then that's when the the super cells develop. These things can rise up 30,000 to 60,000 feet in some cases.

Duane Friend: 06:22

You got air that's rising up upwards of a 150 miles an hour. And as that air is rising, you gotta have air coming in to replace the air that's rising up, and if that air has a lot of humidity in it, which is what we talked about with that that air coming in, it's maybe a half a mile up if it's got a lot of moisture to it. And it rises up, it's gonna release a lot of energy, and that's where you you get the tornado activity as part of that. So there's a number of different mechanisms out there, and the the holy grail is going to be figuring out how to figure out when that is gonna happen more than 10 to 20 minutes ahead of time.

Abigail Garofalo: 07:00

Yeah. I have so many thoughts, Duane. 1, my new favorite way to describe humid air is juicy. Personally, gotta start using that in my everyday life. I'm really excited for the summer to come up to start saying, wow, it feels really juicy out today.

Duane Friend: 07:14

That's right.

Abigail Garofalo: 07:15

I really haven't seen that. Yes. I'm digging that. The other one I wanted to clarify for the audience is, tornadoes are typically categorized by these F categories. Correct? Like, 1 through 5, if I remember, and 5 being the most intense highest level of tornado. Is that correct, Duane?

Duane Friend: 07:34

Yeah. And it's this all goes back to, doctor Ted or Theodore Fujita. He was, and we could do a whole session just talking about him. He's a really interesting individual. He was actually just a few miles away from, the second atomic blast in Japan when that occurred.

Duane Friend: 07:55

And they actually hired him, had him do work. He was, an engineering teacher, at the time, but they had him do work on that bomb blast to figure out how high the bomb was when it actually went off by looking at the blast pattern and all of those things. But he also was very interested in weather, and he would go out on mountains, look at at storms, and look at how they were doing. Eventually, he got he got moved back to or he got invited to the University of Chicago where he did a lot of his weather research, but he was the one that developed that Fujita scale, which is basically looking at the damage that's caused in a particular area and then kinda working backward to determine what that wind speed was. So that's where the F scale originally came from.

Duane Friend: 08:41

A few years ago, they modified it a little bit. Doctor Fujita passed away back in the nineties, I believe, early nineties, but that's where they get the EF or enhanced Fujita scale. And that, so an EF 5 is essentially anything over, I believe, 201 mile an hour. And just, for the bit of trivia out there, how many if anybody goes on to Jeopardy, they can use this. Currently, the fastest wind speed ever recorded with a tornado is 318 miles per hour.

Abigail Garofalo: 09:11

Wow.

Abigail Garofalo: 09:12

I was debating on asking that question about the the EF and the F scale because I was like, oh, this is a Midwest podcast. Everybody here knows it, but now I'm so glad I asked. I feel like I got so much good nuggets of information about the history of this. That's so cool.

Amy Lefringhouse: 09:27

Oh, I think it's interesting that they, at first, he studied it backwards, you know, looking at the damage and coming from the from the atomic bomb and and what damage has been done, I think that's that's very interesting. The EF, does it does that mean that there's a lot more, instrumental, I guess, monitoring that's happening that we can see that we can see what the wind speeds are? Is that what that means?

Duane Friend: 09:52

Well, I think it's it's more just a refinement of looking at that damage, and then relating it to and and specifically, more of talking about, okay, this is associated with the the fastest at 3 second gust that could have occurred.

Amy Lefringhouse: 10:07

Okay. Okay. So this time of year, we seem to have a lot of watches and tornado warnings. Why you know, why is it this time of year that these things are happening, and then why do we live in this area where we, you know, I mean, why do we live in this area? That's a funny question to say but

Abigail Garofalo: 10:26

We ask ourselves that occasionally.

Amy Lefringhouse: 10:29

This time of year we wonder, but why is it this area has, you know, tornado watches and warnings happening often?

Duane Friend: 10:38

First of all, though, why is it happening here? We just happen to be in a great geographic region for that to happen. And we've got, just like I'd mentioned a little bit ago, we've got multiple areas where we got different types of air moving in. And the one thing to remember with these different types of air is they don't they don't just blend together because they're different densities and different temperatures, so they do not want to just mix. So when they come together, they clash.

Duane Friend: 11:04

So we have that cooler air coming out of Canada. And this time of year, we start having more air from the Gulf of Mexico, which is that warm and juicy air, moving in. And so that that's really what provides the energy for that thunderstorm development. And where most of that energy starts out at is in what's known as typically as tornado alley, which is East Central Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, that area. And they are also closer to the desert southwest, so they have close access to that hot dry air.

Duane Friend: 11:41

Gulf of Mexico is much closer, and so that's where they start having those dry lines develop early on in February, March. That's typically when they start their tornado season. But as time progresses, that warmth gradually moves farther north. And if you look at tornado progression throughout the year, you would see that, yeah, it starts in in Texas and then just continually moves north. And typically, the Dakotas and that area received their peak tornado season in June, for that.

Duane Friend: 12:12

But, that's essentially why we we have that clash of of still cooler air from Canada and then that warmer air from the Gulf of Mexico.

Abigail Garofalo: 12:23

That's so cool. I just I feel like people feel so localized sometimes. Like, this is what's happening in my area. I have a sister in Texas, and so I'll be like, oh, yeah. What's the weather like there? And she's always saying it's, like, hot and warm and stuff. And I'm like, I am wearing a winter coat today. But I don't I've never conceptualized the concept. Like, the idea that, like, oh, it's so cold up here and it's warm down here and somewhere, that has to be and something might be happening because of the meeting of those, 2 different air densities and and temperatures and things like that. And that's it's just really fascinating to think about and gives you this, larger lens to look at the world with, which is really interesting.

Abigail Garofalo: 13:06

So you're looking at you it sounds like there's some ways that you know that tornadoes occur. Right? Like, we've kind we know a couple of things, And so there has to be, you know, some kind of predictability or tracking that we could do to understand, you know, where and when and how maybe even big these tornadoes could get, you know, what are some of the things that meteorologists meteor meteorologists, I got this, do? How do they track it? And, you know, what are some challenges to that? As you said, it's a little unpredictable too. Okay. Well, as far as as forecasting, it depends on how far you're looking out. But they can do a pretty good job of at least having, an enhanced chance of tornadoes. They they they can kind of predict that several days in advance. And in fact, they're they're getting much better with that. There's a was a University of Illinois study just a few years ago that looked at particular types of weather patterns.

Duane Friend: 14:11

And, they determined from that that there was at least 2 different types of of patterns depending on where, high pressure and low pressure, those h's and l's that you see on a weather map, would be, in the United States if they were kind of in place for several days. Those particular situations, those patterns, they found a much higher likelihood of tornado outbreaks occurring. And by outbreaks, we're typically talking about situations where you may have more than 16 tornadoes in a particular day, but they saw, a good probability of these things up to 3 weeks out. Now that's not saying that they would be able to say, okay, Jacksonville, Illinois is gonna have a tornado at 3 PM on such and such day. But they can say, okay, with this setup, we've got a good chance of tornado outbreaks occurring, which which I think is is kinda neat.

Duane Friend: 15:10

But just looking a couple of days out, the severe storms forecast center out in Norman, Oklahoma, that's that's what they do all the time. So they're constantly looking at these dynamic weather patterns, situations that are going on, and they can even predict with pretty good accuracy several days in advance of where really bad storms are gonna be and with that the likelihood of tornadoes. Now if we wanna get closer in when we actually see those tornadoes, couple of different ways that that can be done. The first way, which has been done forever, is people seeing it. So there's, observers, storm spotters out, and, of course, you've got, a lot of first responders that are also, engaged in that activity when storms come out.

Duane Friend: 16:00

And that that's one of the first lines of defense, I guess, you'd say with it. But, obviously, when you've got nighttime, when you've got a lot of really heavy rain going on, you may not be see those things. So then the next thing, that works and works pretty well, especially at night is, weather radar or doppler radar. I don't know how much detail you wanna get into talking about how Doppler radar works, but, essentially, it's looking at sending out a signal. It bounces off of rain, hail, whatever, comes back to the radar.

Duane Friend: 16:34

But not only does it detect that rain, the other thing that it can do is it can detect which direction it's going. And so what the the big thing that they're looking for, the big signal that they're looking for, and probably a lot of people have heard of something called a hook echo. What that is essentially showing is within a small area, it's showing the rain moving in one direction, but then right next to it, the rain's moving in the opposite direction, which then pretty much tells the the meteorologist or the radar folks that you've got rotation going on within that area, very tight area of rotation. Now that does not necessarily mean that there's a tornado on the ground, but if they see that, they see that rotation, they will go ahead and issue a tornado warning because there's a really, really good chance that that tornado may may come to the ground. Another bit of trivia. Well, I'll ask you guys this.

Duane Friend: 17:26

How how far in advance from the time a tornado is a tornado warning goes out to the time a tornado may actually hit an area? And I don't expect you to to just give me a give me what your guesses are.

Abigail Garofalo: 17:40

Yeah. I'm thinking of the last time, like, I'm just recalling, like, when we had the big hail up here in in Cook County and, like, I'm in the northwest suburbs and so I was, like, watching the storm while, my partner was, like, comforting our 2 year old because he was like, I don't like the bowling because that's what we call the thunder right now. And I'm trying to remember, like, I feel like the warning came out, like, at least an hour before, like, the storm really hit us. So I'm gonna go with an hour.

Duane Friend: 18:10

Okay. And that's that's a good guess. Amy, do you have one?

Amy Lefringhouse: 18:13

I was thinking further out, but maybe 2 to 3 for a warning, tornado warning.

Abigail Garofalo: 18:23

I always I always say, the best example I saw of, like, a watch versus a warning, and Dwayne, help me out with this if you think this is wrong. But a watch is, like, I have all the pieces of a taco. I bought all of my ingredients to make tacos for dinner tonight. All of the ingredients exist in my fridge. A warning is like my taco is built and sitting on my top table, and I have a taco.

Duane Friend: 18:45

There you go. That's right. Both both and you both had good guesses. The average time, like, time when the tornado is detected to it, actually hits an area, is only 13 minutes with the current technology. Yep.

Abigail Garofalo: 19:00

So that's just an audio media, but my face just, like, expressed extreme surprise. Yeah. 13 minutes?

Duane Friend: 19:08

13 minutes. You know, when you think about that, though, that if you get that warning and you have 13 minutes, that's plenty of time hopefully for folks to get to their shelters, but it's always gonna be much better to get, a much farther, advanced warning for that. So, but, yeah, that's that's the average. And there's a couple of different things with that radar that, obviously, that that helps a lot. But one of the things with the radar and this radar system that that's in place with the weather service has been in place since about the, I think about the nineties was when it was installed. But the technology has advanced quite a bit since then.

Duane Friend: 19:49

And so what they're looking at now is trying to improve that because one of the issues with radars is as it goes out farther, that beam of energy gets wider, but the resolution goes down. And so what happens is, you you know, then these things are several 100 miles apart from each National Weather Service office, so you you kinda lose some of that resolution of being able to to see finer details farther out that that radar goes. The other thing is with the with the just a regular Doppler radar, for them to look at the entire height of a thunderstorm. They it has to go around, and then they have to change the angle of it to go up and down. And that takes about 4 minutes.

Duane Friend: 20:33

That's a long time when you're talking about tornado development. Mhmm. But some of the the technology that's coming into the news things, and this will probably be a while before it's fully involved, is something called the phased array where they don't have that radar that's spinning around. What they have are many small radars, and they're all hooked up. So it it doesn't really have to move because the signals are going out all over the place, and then they're able to look at things much more quickly. So that's hopefully something that'll get, installed in radars here in the near future, but, of course, that takes a lot of money to do so.

Abigail Garofalo: 21:15

Oh, Duane, I'm picturing. I'm picturing I don't know if any of you are all are familiar with the movie Twister. I'm sure there's a lot of inaccuracies in it, but I'm picturing, like, the the thing that they were trying to get into the tornado to make like, to to measure it, the speed, and get to get all that data and stuff like that. It just all of those pictures are running through my mind.

Duane Friend: 21:37

Didn't they did they call that Toto or Dorothy in that one? I don't remember.

Abigail Garofalo: 21:41

Oh, yes. It was, like, Wizard of Oz were deleted. You're right. It's been a while since I've seen I I was terrified of it as a child. So I was like, it was winds that always scared me, and it was because of this movie and, like, the nighttime tornado.

Duane Friend: 21:58

And they actually did have, actually did have that type of thing that they were trying back in about that time frame when the movie came out. But they found out it was too dangerous for people to try to get close enough to a tornado to get it in line with it. And, so, yeah. Now they just and they have mobile radars now where they can be off at a safe distance and look at those things. So, anyway, the the hopefully, that increase in technology, will will help out with that. And, actually, you know, with AI and those kind of things coming along, they're improving the software associated with that. So that's also helping, that prediction aspect of it to be more intuitive. So, they're hoping that that part will increase the time, that they can send out warnings as well.

Amy Lefringhouse: 22:50

Sure. So increasing that 13 minutes to give us some time to get to our shelter.

Abigail Garofalo: 22:55

Yeah. Yes. So critical.

Amy Lefringhouse: 22:58

I feel like those who maybe don't have a basement and need to go, you know, somewhere somewhere else. So yeah.

Duane Friend: 23:06

And one of the other things with, with warnings though is human nature because, if someone hears a tornado warning for their area, what's the first thing that a lot of people will do? Look outside. They go to their shelter? Yeah. They'll go out and stay into their driveway. And so that's you know, and I I've seen several cases where people said, well, we went outside and there was a tornado, so they had to run back indoors if they and they were able to hopefully get indoors, in time. But, yeah, it's just human nature to do that. So, and I don't know if you've noticed or not, but the weather service in the last few years has kinda changed their wording. So when a tornado is imminent, they'll they'll use terms like this is a life threatening situation, you know, get to your shelters immediately. So hopefully, that'll put more, emphasis in helping people get to the place they need to be to save themselves.

Abigail Garofalo: 24:07

That social aspect of of communication about science is so important, and and what's happening because, I mean, I it's it's cultural a little bit too. Like, up I feel like up in the suburbs, tornadoes are not as much a thing. We're not really I feel I I don't know, Dwight, if this has anything to do with it. Is it, like, sometimes, like, there there's too much buildings for it to kind of the wind to pick up maybe. I don't quite know if that's the thing, but I just know there is not as much of a concern. So they're not as they were more of a novelty up here. And my in laws are like, you know, oh, we better get downstairs as soon as there's a tornado warning issued. And I'm over here like, it's fine. I'm from Springfield. Been there, done that. We're good. Like, what's going on? So I feel like that, that shift in language is important because, like, that that's like, oh, this is not, you know, your your mom's tornado warning or something.

Duane Friend: 25:06

And the the the aspect of tornadoes, and I think there have been some studies that show that, you know, in really large cities, yeah, the, and I think Chicago area is one of those that, you may not have as many tornadoes either because of well, I can't remember exact the reasoning why, but but then you still got the collar area that's still really susceptible and and you've got that really high density of population. So, you know, if the thing that happened back in 1990 in Plainfield occurred again, you'd have many more fatalities because of that increase in density.

Amy Lefringhouse: 25:46

Well, switching gears here, Duane, you are our climate specialist here at University of Illinois Extension. So let's talk a little bit about the changes in weather patterns, and tornadoes. Are we seeing any connection between some of this climate change and weather pattern changes and tornadic tornado activity? Are we are we seeing anything right now currently? Do we expect to see anything different in the future?

Duane Friend: 26:15

Okay. Well, first, I'll just start off with just the trends, of what we what we've been seeing in the last 5, 10 years or so. And so good news in terms of the overall average number of tornadoes really hasn't changed all that much. Now we've seen differences, trends on how they are occurring. The the number of tornado days has gone down, which you would think sounds good.

Duane Friend: 26:45

But if that average number hasn't changed, what that's telling us and what they've seen is the number of tornadoes that happen within a day have gone up. So those number of tornadoes within a 24 hour period when they do occur, there's more of them. And even the the tornado outbreaks where you have a bunch of tornadoes, that has also increased. So that trend has been taking place and really haven't seen big change in and again, depending on what you're looking at. I'm I'm right now, I'm kinda talking about the United States as a whole.

Duane Friend: 27:22

The overall number of those F1 tornado or the let's say, EF 2 and above really haven't increased. The EF ones have a a slight increase in trend, but, again, not not anything huge. The other part though that, and this was a study that was done by Northern Illinois University just a few years ago. It was looking at the frequency of of tornadoes, where they're occurring. And we did we talked earlier in the podcast about that traditional tornado alley, which is in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, that area.

Duane Friend: 28:01

It's still the number one area for tornadoes in the United States. Some folks may have heard of, the secondary alley, which is called Dixie Alley, and that's goes from Mississippi, Alabama all the way up essentially into Illinois. It's kind of a secondary area. What this NIU study showed in the frequency of tornadoes was that a traditional tornado alley, the frequency of tornadoes was going trending downward. Dixie Alley, on the other hand, was trending up.

Abigail Garofalo: 28:34

Interesting.

Duane Friend: 28:36

So, you know, whether that trend will continue, there they really couldn't tell, determine why that was occurring. But, yeah, it was it was a little, interesting, I guess, would would be the the easiest way to say it or intriguing that that was, what they had found.

Abigail Garofalo: 28:57

And so inter oh, it's so interesting because we've taught we've, heard about the shifting, like, growing zones and shifting even habitat areas for you know, we're seeing the armadillo more north and and other species and species suitability for plants and things like that. And to think about that, you know, the the shift in where we see tornadoes even Mhmm. Could possibly change. That's fascinating. I'd I would love to learn more about why. I wanna know why. Do more research, researchers!

Duane Friend: 29:37

You know, and one of the things that's coming into play, I, I think, you know, we go back to that term, Juicy Air, but you look at the Gulf of Mexico. Last year is a prime example. They had record high temperatures throughout most of the gulf. Where do we get a lot of our air in the spring, summer, and fall? From Gulf of Mexico.

Duane Friend: 29:54

So if you're bringing more of that warm, humid air into the area, you've got the likelihood or the potential for more thunderstorms, which could lead to more tornadoes. Now there's a lot of there's always a lot of other factors involved just because we're getting that warm humid air in here doesn't automatically mean that's gonna take the case, but it sure isn't going to take away from it.

Abigail Garofalo: 30:16

Sorry. This may be a question you can't answer and it's okay if not. When it comes to, like, the wild fires in Canada and and across, you know, United States that we've been seeing, what is that a possible impact? Because that, I'm sure, raises air temperatures, changes, you know, certain aspects. Is that something that could possibly change tornado trends as well?

Duane Friend: 30:42

Well, I would say if it is if it did, it would it would be a very rare occurrence. The more particulates you get in the air, you've got more condensation nuclei thanks to that water vapor to latch onto, which is necessary for condensation to occur when you're changing that water vapor back to liquid. So, you do have the potential for increased precipitation when you've got those particulates in the air. The thing would be you'd have to have those other conditions in place, still.

Duane Friend: 31:15

You'd have to have that that warm humid air in place. You'd have to have another mechanism, you know, another cold air mass coming in to to generate more lifting of the air. You've gotta have some mechanism there that's gonna cause the air to lift up. So just having those particulates there won't automatically mean you're gonna have more thunderstorms, but you've got one other piece of the puzzle there for it to do so. The only other thing I was gonna say with that just in general in terms of climate change, now they haven't been able to put any clear correlation between tornado activity, changes or trends, and climate change at this point yet. And you'll see some media reports that that may say that, but, from what I've seen the research isn't bearing that out as of yet.

Abigail Garofalo: 32:03

Not a it's not as clear and it's not something especially around the skepticism people have about climate change. You know, researchers wanna be I'm sure wanna be sure, and And they wanna be like, we're not throwing out ideas here. We're telling you what we see. And so I appreciate that I don't know that candidness about that.

Abigail Garofalo: 32:26

So, well, how can individuals and communities improve their resilience to tornado hazards? I feel like if we're seeing them more, especially in these closer clumpings together of time as opposed to spread out over the days, What can communities do something about that to be a little more resilient?

Duane Friend: 32:48

Well, a couple of different things. First of all, you can, we can all encourage people more people to become, weather spotters. Going through that that 90 minute training with the National Weather Service to to be able to do that. The the more observers you got out there, the more advanced notice you may have. But in terms of of just looking at a person's place of residence, or if if someone is gonna be building a house, there are ways to make those structures more resilient to wind damage.

Duane Friend: 33:22

One of the big things, one of the first things that people should look at is the garage doors because when you get a really strong wind, tornado, derecho, whatever, one of the first things to go is the garage door. So if people can, make those stronger, that's one of the first things. If someone is building a house, there are actually things called hurricane straps that you can input in with the construction, that essentially ties the house together from the foundation all the way up to the roof. Now is it gonna keep the house perfect? No. But, there's a big difference between a house that's maybe twisted a little bit and a house that's completely torn out the foundation. So, and people could retrofit. That would be really kind of probably hard and expensive for folks to do, but there are ways to make houses more resilient. And, yeah, that does add a little bit of price to the, to the overall cost for new construction, but it also brings a lot of peace of mind as well. Now in some cases, and when that you're you're looking at Tornado Alley and Oklahoma City is kind of a bull's eye for that area.

Duane Friend: 34:40

A lot of folks in that area have put in safe rooms. They've actually built safe rooms into their house, which is essentially this encased, area in the center of the house, that people can go. And I've seen pictures where the entire house have been blown away, but that safe house is still intact. And that's something that obviously, again, would be a a cost involved. But when you've got, like they do out in Oklahoma City, the potential for these really large tornadoes year in and year out, during this time of year, it's something that, again, provides a lot of peace of mind.

Duane Friend: 35:15

So there's a number of different things that people could do if they wanna do an outdoor storm shelter. That's another thing. There used to be, well, back on when I grew up on the farm, we used our cellar, where we usually stored our vegetables, which was kinda creepy because it was full of cobwebs and things like that. But it was, it was a place to go to when those kind of things happen. So and if if you don't have all those things, then, you know, it's and I get this question all the time.

Duane Friend: 35:47

So where is the safe place to be? Well, you wanna put yourself have as many walls between you and the outside as possible. You don't wanna be near windows. If you're going down in the basement, that's okay, but then people need to think about what is directly overhead. I mean, if you've got a bunch of heavy appliances right overhead and something happens to that floor, that may not be the best place to be. So you need to think about that as well. There's no particular place. You don't need to be on the southwest side of a basement or anything or a house. But think more about where you're gonna have the best protection.

Abigail Garofalo: 36:23

I've never thought about the, what's above you. I we we grew up with a basement, and I was always like, yeah. Once I'm in the basement, I'm good. Never thought about that the kitchen was above me. Not once in the address.

Duane Friend: 36:37

And then I get the question sometimes too. Well, if you're out in a car, what do you do? And that one is kinda tough because, and I'm sure people have seen videos where cars get picked up and just flipped around. But if you can't get to a shelter, can't get into a a house or something, don't get under an underpass or an overpass. That's not a good place to be, but, you know, I think to myself, well, do you wanna stay in the car or do you wanna try to get out into a ditch?

Duane Friend: 37:08

And then you still gotta contend with all this debris flying around, and potentially hitting you in the head. So, you know, I I'm I'm not really sure in that situation what would be the best thing to do. Probably getting out maybe and putting getting yourself into, a ditch if there's something close by as long as it's not flooded and trying to protect your head as best as possible. But that one's really a tough call in some cases.

Amy Lefringhouse: 37:35

Sometimes a vehicle might be your protection, you know, in some cases.

Duane Friend: 37:39

Yeah. Yeah. You might take a little ride, but maybe

Abigail Garofalo: 37:42

Well, Duane, this has been so interesting. Thank you so much. I feel like this is a quarter of the natural world, I never get to really explore as often as I like. And every time I hear about it, I'm always excited too and and nerd out a little bit.

Abigail Garofalo: 37:58

So I appreciate the time for that. So now it's time for special spotlight, the part of the show where you get to shine a spotlight on something cool you saw in nature this last month. So let's start with Amy. Amy, what is your special spotlight?

Amy Lefringhouse: 38:15

Well, it is springtime and it's been kind of warm, I guess, really warm this spring so far, and I've been outside in my yard and I'm finally seeing a few of my native plants that I planted last. I guess I planted them last spring. So this will be my 2nd season with the native the native pollinator garden that I have in my yard. So I'm anxiously, you know, watching all of my areas of my native native plants to come up right now, and I see a few of them, but I'm like you know, I keep having to tell myself, it's only March. It's only March early March at that, so be patient in, waiting for those. So but I've seen a few, a few little plants peeking up, so I'm excited about that.

Duane Friend: 39:08

So, Duane, what is your special spotlight this month? This actually just happened yesterday. I was looking outside our kitchen window, and it looks out over a, small body of water. And I knew we had eagles in the area, but I never really seen one close by. And I was watching, and there was actually one flying out over the water, and it would go away for a little bit and come back. And it did this for several minutes, so I think it was and maybe spied some fish near the surface. It was trying to find lunch, but it just kept circling and circling, and then it finally flew away. So I didn't get to see it come down and actually grab anything, but, I did get some pictures of one. So that that that was really cool.

Amy Lefringhouse: 39:48

Oh, that's neat.

Abigail Garofalo: 39:50

Just some spring magic you both are experiencing right now. I love it so much. I've I, didn't get to be on the last podcast episode, with with Chris, so that makes me think of his spring wildlife episode as well. Just kinda get to see nature come alive and wake up, so that's so fun. Mine is actually from a little over a month ago. I have been, like, slowly converting my yard, and, this is, like, the 3rd or 4th year of it. And so I think the animals are starting to be like, oh, this is a place to be. This is the popping place to hang out where the winter because they leave their their stuff up and have a little brush pile for me and so don't spray things. So, wow, what a what a party. So I woke up about a month ago, and my partner was, like, there is an animal on the deck. And I was, like, what what animal? And my son goes, it's a mouse. And I was like, that an that mouse is not sticking around for you to look at it on the deck. Okay? It was not a mouse. It was much larger than a mouse, actually. It was a possum. But if you I love this connection my son made. He's too, because if you look at it, if you've seen a picture of a mouse, a possum kinda looks like a giant mouse. And so and it was it was, like, a foot away from me, like, right in front of where our deck door is. And so you we could see it up close. I got So many good pictures and videos and then I'm looking out further in the deck, or further in my backyard and there's a second one sitting like in my garden and so they're just like buddies hanging out. I went, dropped my kids off at daycare, came back, went back on my deck about an hour later, and it was still there. So I don't know what this nocturnal creature was doing at 9 AM, hanging out on my deck, but they were very cute, and just hanging out. And the I mean, honestly, it looked pretty healthy. I feel like possums usually have, like, frostbite issues, and and other kind of, like sometimes you see them in urban areas. They look a little rough, but he looked pretty good or she looked pretty good. I don't know the way to tell the difference.

Abigail Garofalo: 42:11

We'll have to call Peggy up one day and visit her. But, so yeah, that's my special spotlight, is I got to see a possum like a foot away and, like, observe it for like an hour. It was cool.

Abigail Garofalo: 42:24

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and, again, for sharing your special spotlights, everybody, and and I just I love this podcast.

Abigail Garofalo: 42:34

So this has been another episode of the Spotlight on Natural Resources podcast. Check out next month when we talk with our very own Amy Lefringhouse about Illinois freshwater mussels.

Amy Lefringhouse: 42:47

Yes. Yes. Can't wait!

Narrator: 43:06

University of Illinois Extension.