Tornado Climatology
Alyssa Reynolds
My name is Alyssa Reynolds and I am a master’s student in the Atmospheric Sciences program. I recently completed my bachelor's in Atmospheric Sciences here at Ohio State as well and decided to come back to the Department of Geography to pursue my master’s. I’ve been a lifelong weather enthusiast ever since I saw my first funnel cloud when I was three years old and I knew I was going to study tornadoes at OSU one day. My research was started during my undergrad career when I was curious about tornadogenesis, the creation of tornadoes. This interest eventually evolved to wanting to know more about the tornadoes we see in the Ohio Valley –Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. I also wanted to know what patterns I could find, if any, in a data analysis not previously conducted outside of Tornado Alley (the Plains and southeastern United States). My undergrad research thesis created a very basic tornado climatology to discuss and view any possible patterns through data analysis using Python and tornado databases created by the Storm Prediction Center. My graduate research seeks to expand upon this climatology and collaborate with National Weather Service meteorologists and county emergency managers to see how the climatology can be changed to fit each office’s needs, in addition to attempting to communicate this information with the general public. I want populations within these three states to understand their general tornado climatologies and see how they can better prepare themselves for large and small tornado occurrences. I am also hoping to conduct and incorporate case studies of tornado outbreaks to explore how weather and climate patterns had an effect on these outbreaks, including but not limited to: El Niño/La Niña patterns in the Pacific Ocean, jet stream and low pressure locations, drought years vs. rainy years, and temperature patterns as well. My goal is to analyze these weather and climate patterns to see if tornado occurrences in the Ohio Valley can be predicted more accurately based on case studies and if these can be included within the general tornado climatology.