Storm Cloud of Disagreement Surrounds El Nino’s Effect on Twisters

Each spring, with every ugly dark green cloud, Jamey Wright’s father would usher the family into a cellar, out of storms’ way. Wright professes no fear today, but he learned early to respect the weather.

That may be good, because since 1950 the geographical center of tornado activity in the continental United States is Fordland, about 175 miles southeast of Kansas City --and, more precisely, on Wright’s 136 acres.

Nearly five decades of data averaging twister latitudes and longitudes place Wright’s property in the middle of the action--although, to his knowledge, no tornado has ever hit his farm.

Perhaps one never will. With tornadoes, the past offers no clue to the future. And statisticians attach little significance to such a finding.

But Joe Eagleman, a meteorology professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, has plotted a similar “center of activity” on graphs for individual years. Such a spot, he says, is usually in central or southern Missouri.

Weather is a favorite topic for farmers here, and April, the start of tornado season, keeps the conversation flowing. The big talk this year is El Nino, already blamed for rain and storms in the West and Southeast.

Though Wright insists “you can’t outguess the weather,” tornado experts are already watching for the funneling winds and guessing about El Nino’s impact.

“The atmosphere is chaotic,” says Howard Bluestein, meteorology professor at the University of Oklahoma at Norman. “It’s very, very slight changes in what happens at the beginning--slight changes in what happens right now--that will affect what happens a week from now tremendously.”

A factor or not, El Nino faces tough precedents. The planet’s fiercest tornadoes touch down most often in the United States. On average, 836 sightings are reported each year.

From its Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded more than 38,000 segments--twisters that stay on a straight path--between 1950 and 1995.

Those storms caused nearly 71,000 injuries and more than 4,100 deaths. That’s an average of two injuries per twister, according to data compiled from newspaper accounts and National Weather Service reports.

An Associated Press analysis of that data shows that 75% of the tornadoes touched down in 17 states--in the Plains, Midwest and Southeast. These include Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin.

Just last week, tornadoes swept through Tennessee, Arkansas and Kentucky, killing at least 10 people. More than 100 people have been killed by tornadoes so far this year, all but two in southern states.

Meteorologists do agree that El Nino--the intense warming of the Pacific Ocean off South America--has intensified in the United States and shifted south the jet stream’s winter winds, bringing floods to Southern California and heavy rains and winds to Florida.

Will El Nino add kick to this season’s tornadoes?

Predictions fluctuate like a meteorologist’s wind gauge. William Monfredo, a graduate student at Mississippi State University in Starkville, is sanguine. Earning a master’s degree in geoscience, he studies tornado data, El Nino statistics and atmospheric models. His conclusion: The Midwest will see fewer strong tornadoes.

Many side with farmer Wright, claiming flat out that no one can make a sound prediction. KU’s Eagleman and Joe Schaefer, director of Norman’s center, say their studies show no definite correlation. Adds colleague Louis Wicker, a professor at Texas A&M; University in College Station: “I’ve chased storms, and I’ve been doing that for 18 springs. I can say with some confidence I have no clue.”

With expertise rooted in local lore, some of Fordland’s 530 residents offer their own ideas, theories and memories of “the big ones.”

Mary Jane Keen, Fordland’s city clerk, insists that tornadoes follow the railroad tracks that cut through the heart of town. Other residents, including Wright, agree on the town’s safe zone: the Dogwood General Store, 12 miles southeast of town, where Route Z crosses state Route 14.

“Z highway, two miles down the road, can get a downpour. Three miles down Highway 14 can get rain showers. We get nothing,” says Mark Dever, whose family owns the store. “We haven’t figured that one out yet.”

The Wrights have had close calls. Wright remembers one unsettling evening 20 years ago when a neighbor joined him on his porch, about five miles south of town, to count funnel clouds as they formed.

Whether El Nino makes the season worse or not, Fordland is already bracing for storms, swapping three empty propane tanks for labor from the volunteer fire department to install a used tornado siren. It is to be sounded when a funnel cloud is spotted.

Spruced up with bright yellow paint, the siren--Fordland’s first--hangs halfway up the town’s water tower. But Wright is no more, or less, reassured.

“I don’t worry about storms,” he says. “Ain’t much you can do.”