After a rather uneventful June, Chicago-area residents have been thrust into severe weather this week, with tornadoes sweeping through the area on Wednesday.
Additionally, a tornado-warned storm moved through McHenry County on Thursday as more storms threaten the region on Friday.
As residents in some suburbs continue a cleanup process from storm damage, some are wondering if these storms represent a pattern of an increasing possibility of tornadoes in the Chicago-area.
While the traditional "Tornado Alley" seems to be shifting, that shift does not appear to be towards the Windy City, according to NBC 5 Storm Team meteorologist Kevin Jeanes.
Many Americans may initially think of the wide open plains and cornfields of states like Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska as the traditional tornado hotspots, but the tornado alley of today seems to be further east.
Jeanes points to a recent notable increase in tornado outbreaks and severe weather across the American southeast, affecting a terrain wildly different than that of the Great Plains.
States such as Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama were identified as states that have observed a notable uptick in deadly tornadoes in recent years.
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While Jeanes doesn't consider it the sole reason, climate change is likely a driving force behind the shifting of tornado hotspots in the United States.
"It's a big part of it because the air is warming," Jeanes said. "It's getting warmer, and warmer air holds more moisture when there's more moisture in the air. There's more instability in the atmosphere."
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With humid and warmer air becoming more widespread across a wider region, the conditions for severe storms to develop are aided.
"So with the air being more humid and warmer at the lower levels of the atmosphere, you get more lift and you get stronger thunderstorms developing. So those ingredients are a bigger reason why there are stronger storms, also, more flooding events going on across the south and now all the way up here to the Chicago area too," Jeanes said.
Jeanes also dispelled the myth that tornadoes can't affect downtown areas with large buildings.
"You think you're safe in a major or densely populated area and tornadoes don't go through there very often. But that's not to say that that can't happen," Jeanes said. "The wind likes to be undisturbed and it likes the path of least resistance and that's how you get some of these tight rotating updrafts in these thunderstorms."
While Chicago may be far from the epicenter of a newly-emerging tornado alley, it's best to remain cautious in the event that potentially life-threatening storms approach the region.
