We’re Not (Only) in Kansas Anymore: Tornadoes Beyond Tornado Alley

Prof. Alexandra Anderson-Frey

University of Washington

Monday April 14, 2025, 2 PM ET

Abstract:

The layperson’s perception of tornadoes is that they are near-exclusive to the U.S. Great Plains and Midwest, where a favorable combination of near-storm environmental conditions is most often present in the spring and summer. In reality, of course, tornadoes occur over a wide variety of geographical locations, times of day, and seasons, with complications such as low population density leading to specific challenges in issuing watches and warnings as well as establishing climatologies for such rare events in the first place. After a brief introduction to the dynamics underlying the formation of tornadoes, this talk explores the use of machine learning-aided clustering to characterize the prototypical environments in which tornadoes form, then takes those results a step further by discussing how and why tornadoes can occur despite the apparent absence of key dynamic and kinematic “ingredients” in the environment.

Biosketch:

Alexandra Anderson-Frey is an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. She obtained her BSc Honours in Atmospheric Science from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where temperatures below -50C chased her to warmer climates. After internships at Environment and Climate Change Canada and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, she obtained a MSc in Atmospheric Science from McGill University with a thesis that explored a new use of the time dimension in kriging to reduce gaps in radar data. She finally moved to the U.S. for a PhD in Meteorology at Penn State, where she worked on self-organizing maps to establish prototypical near-storm environments. After a postdoc at the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, she joined the faculty at the University of Washington in the fall of 2019 and was awarded a Calvin Professorship in Atmospheric Sciences in 2022.

Webinar:

Event site: https://go.umd.edu/anderson-frey

Zoom Webinar: https://go.umd.edu/anderson-freywebinar

Zoom Meeting ID: 914 5056 4188

Zoom password: essic

US Toll: +13017158592
Global call-in numbers: https://umd.zoom.us/u/aMElEpvNu

For IT assistance:
Cazzy Medley: cazzy@umd.edu

Resources:

Seminar schedule & archive: https://go.umd.edu/essicseminar

Seminar Google calendar: https://go.umd.edu/essicseminarcalendar

Seminar recordings on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ESSICUMD