Tornado Alley and Severe Convective Storms

The term "Tornado Alley" was coined in 1952 by U.S. Air Force meteorologists Major Ernest Fawbush and Captain Robert Miller, working at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, in a study of severe weather patterns across the southern and central Great Plains, roughly spanning parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. The region's exposure to frequent, intense tornadoes arises from its geography: the Rocky Mountains to the west help produce dry continental air aloft, the Gulf of Mexico to the south supplies a persistent low-level flow of warm, moist air, and the jet stream frequently crosses the Plains at just the altitude needed to add strong vertical wind shear to the mix, a combination rarely repeated elsewhere on Earth with comparable frequency.