About 30 tornadoes swept across the United States on Friday evening and Saturday morning, leaving devastated cities in their wake and killing more than 90 people. According to meteorologists, such an event is only a foretaste of what awaits us in the coming years.
Climate change will intensify meteorological phenomena, believes Jean-Pierre Blanchet, professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM). “What we’re seeing right now is just a little taste of what’s to come,” he says.
The death toll from tornadoes in the United States rose on Sunday. At least 80 people have died in Kentucky alone, Governor Andy Beshear announced. “This number will exceed a hundred,” he added.
SOURCE: FRANCE-PRESSE AGENCY, INFOGRAPHIC PRESS
Where have the tornadoes hit?
Joe Biden stressed on Saturday that the weather phenomena were more intense with global warming, without however establishing a direct causal link between climate change and the disaster that grieved the country.
“He is absolutely right,” comments Mr. Blanchet. According to the professor, the weather phenomena are likely to become “much more intense”, as is the case with “the fires in California, the floods on the West coast or the drought in the central United States”.
The United States is facing a “new standard” with the proliferation of devastating weather events, the head of the American disaster management agency (FEMA), Deanne Crisswell, was particularly alarmed on Sunday. “The effects we are seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation,” she added.
The FEMA director also underlined the “incredibly unusual” and “historic” dimension of these tornadoes for this season. The month of December is indeed usually rather spared by such events in the United States.
Favorable conditions
According to the National Severe Storms Laboratory of the United States Ocean and Atmospheric Observation Agency (NOAA), approximately 1,200 tornadoes strike the United States each year. The geography of the country is in question, says Mr. Blanchet.
“On the one hand, we have the Rocky Mountains, which block the air from the Pacific, which favors cold air. On the other side, we have the Gulf of Mexico, which is relatively shallow and very warm. ”
When the very cold air of Canada, which is denser and drier, comes into contact with the very hot and humid air of the Gulf, storms form. This atmospheric instability produces the rotation necessary for the formation of a tornado.
Tornadoes in December are, however, infrequent. “Usually there isn’t a lot of instability in winter, which is necessary for tornadoes, because the air is not as hot and humid,” says Victor Gensini, professor of meteorology at Northern University. Illinois. This time, however, it was.
Last night I was looking at satellite images of the United States and it was phenomenal. There was unusual rainfall.
Jean-Pierre Blanchet, professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at UQAM
One of the tornadoes traveled more than 400 km, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Normally, they do not exceed more than 6 km in distance on average.
“It’s really unusual. The movement of the air and the sustained precipitation lasted over a very long period, so that the tornado was constantly regenerating, ”explains Mr. Blanchet.
The balance sheet is getting heavier
Excavations continued in vain on Sunday to find possible survivors of the tornadoes that killed at least 94 people. This exceptional weather phenomenon affected six states, leaving a trail of destruction for hundreds of kilometers, but it was in Mayfield, Kentucky, that it was the worst.
The Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory, which has become a symbol of tornado devastation, is nothing but a tangle of twisted joists and sheet metal stacked several feet high.
PHOTO RYAN C. HERMENS, LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory, where some 110 employees worked Friday night, is nothing but a tangle of twisted joists and sheet metal.
Equipped with cranes, bulldozers and other mechanical devices, rescuers progressed slowly through the rubble on Sunday, continuing to hope for a miracle.
Some 110 employees were working at the plant Friday night to keep up with holiday demand when the tornado destroyed everything. Several dozen people are still missing.
The situation was no better in the states of Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee and Arkansas. Federal disaster response agencies have started to be deployed there, the head of state said, promising that federal services would do “whatever they can to help.”
Messages of support have poured in from abroad. Russian President Vladimir Putin thus offered his “sincere condolences” on Sunday, while the Pope addressed his prayers to the people of Kentucky.
With the Associated Press
695
The Tri-State Tornado, which occurred in March 1925, was the deadliest tornado in U.S. history: 695 people died, 2,000 people were injured, and 15,000 homes were destroyed. The storm hit Missouri, Illinois and Indiana for three and a half hours.
59
Number of F5 or EF5 tornadoes, the highest possible classification on the tornado intensity scale, in US history. F5 tornadoes are estimated to have maximum winds between 420 km / h and 512 km / h.
Source: United States National Weather Service