Q&A

Buffalo tornado breaks NYS record for most tornadoes in a year. What’s going on?

By TOM DINKI

Published August 7, 2024

Buffalo residents are used to shoveling themselves out of lake effect snow. Out of tornado debris? Not so much.

Yet a small tornado ripped through downtown Buffalo on Monday afternoon, damaging buildings, taking down trees and flipping at least one car. No injuries were reported.

While we typically expect to find tornadoes in the Great Plains, the Midwest or the South, this was actually the 26th confirmed tornado to hit New York State so far this year. That’s the most in a single year since those records started being kept in 1950, according to the State Weather Risk Communication Center.

To make sense of it, UBNow spoke with Stuart Evans, assistant professor in the Department of Geography, College of Arts and Sciences, who studies climate, weather and dust storms.

Why do tornadoes form in the first place?

Most tornadoes are spawned from rotating thunderstorms with strong updrafts. In some cases, rotation from the larger storm can be transferred to the updraft embedded within it. When this happens, the updraft shrinks and begins to spin more rapidly, in the same way an ice skater drawing in their arms spins faster and faster. In this way, a small and very fast vortex can be created that we call a tornado.

What can you tell us about the tornado that hit Buffalo on Monday?

The tornado spawned from a strong thunderstorm that came across Lake Erie Monday afternoon. The tornado formed at the waterfront and, over six minutes, traveled 1.4 miles across the lower West Side before dissipating.

Tornadoes are rated from zero to five on the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale, which estimates wind speed based on observed damage. In this case, the observed damage from the tornado indicated the maximum wind speed was approximately 90 miles per hour, giving the tornado a rating of EF-1.

Are tornadoes rare in Western New York, or more common than we might think?

Tornados are indeed rare in Western New York, though as we’re seeing, not impossible. Over the last 30 years, there have been on average nine tornadoes per year in New York State, mostly in the western or eastern parts of the state and fewer in the central or northern parts. This is far less common than in the most tornado-prone parts of the country, and the tornadoes in New York are much less likely to be the most intense ones found in the Great Plains or the Midwest.

There’s now been a record 26 tornadoes in New York State this year. Why do you think that is?

The exceptionally large number of tornadoes in New York this year is in large part due to the remains of Hurricane Beryl passing across the state on July 10. Roughly a year’s worth of tornadoes were spawned that day. Having the remains of a hurricane pass through is an unusual, but not unheard-of, event and is simply a matter of chance.

While research continues on the relationship between climate change and tornadoes, those linkages do not appear to be particularly strong.

Swirling dust can confirm a tornado’s presence. You study dust and its impact on climate. What can you tell us about that?

The tornadoes we’ve been talking about are spawned by intense thunderstorms that bring lots of rain, making the ground too wet to lift dust. Tornadoes like these can sometimes be seen on radar by the debris that they’ve lifted around themselves.

In contrast, dust devils are essentially small, weak tornadoes that form in hot and dry conditions, allowing them to pick up dry desert soil and loft it into the atmosphere as dust. They have local importance but are a relatively minor contributor to the global dust cycle.

Most dust is lofted into the atmosphere by strong surface winds during dry conditions, something my research has been working to identify in the Great Plains and western United States.