Tornado Season Now Runs Year-Round: How to Prepare for the New Reality
Alexis Thornton
3 hours agoTornado Alley is on the move, and it's bringing deadly twisters to places that never saw them coming.
The traditional Great Plains corridor that spawned legends of Kansas cyclones and Oklahoma storm chasers has shifted 400 miles eastward over the past three decades. Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas now face tornado probabilities reaching 90 to 100 percent annually. States like Illinois, Iowa, and Ohio are shattering tornado records while the old Tornado Alley watches from the sidelines.
2024 delivered the second-most tornadoes ever recorded in American history, with 1,796 confirmed twisters. Six states broke their all-time tornado records. December alone brought five times the normal number of tornadoes, killing people who thought winter meant safety.
The rules have changed; tornado season now runs year-round, the geography has shifted east, and millions of people living in increasingly vulnerable areas need to understand what's coming and how to survive it.