Extreme Vulnerability In Mississippi Existed Long Before The Tornado

Like many of you, I have been watching the aftermath as tornadic storms destroyed the lives and property of people in Mississippi. At least 24 fatalities have been reported and damage is widespread. Preliminary reports rate the tornado as an EF4 on the enhanced Fujita scale. However, intensity of the storm is just part of the problem. Many experts, including some of my own research, warn that the vulnerability risk was in place well before the tornado.

Tornadoes are dangerous anywhere, particularly in the South. From a meteorological or climatological perspective, there is nothing unusual about tornadoes in Mississippi at this time of year. The graphic below reveals the probability of a tornado in the U.S. around March 25th based on several decades of data. Early in the Spring season, the South is particularly prone to these violent storms. With this event, all of the meteorological signs were in place, and the National Weather Service was issuing proper warnings. Unfortunately, a good forecast does not guarantee that lives and property will not be spared.

Nocturnal tornadoes are particularly dangerous and the South carries other potential dangerous. Compared to the Great Plains, the region is more densely populated, has more sight lines obscured by trees and hills, and is filled with vulnerable infrastructure. The Vortex-Southeast project is a long-term effort to better understand and predict tornadoes in the region. Its website said, “For a tornado event of a given magnitude, human casualties are higher in the Southeast than in any other region of the U.S….vulnerability is increased by unique socioeconomic factors, which VORTEX-Southeast research has shown include inadequate shelter, housing type, and larger population density relative to other tornado-prone areas in the U.S.” Villanova professor Stephen Strader hits the nail on the head with the tweet below. His research over the years has sounded the alarm about manufactured, mobile, and other types of homes prevalent in the South.

Because of this vulnerability, the extreme-weather climate gap is wider in this region. I have written at length about exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. These three terms help define vulnerability to extreme weather events. Everyone is exposed to the tornado, but some people in the region will have greater sensitivity to it and less ability to bounce back (adaptive capacity). This leads to what I often refer to as the extreme weather-climate gap. That gap in communities, according to research, is often determined by poverty levels, race, age, and access to services. The CDC social vulnerability index below indicates that many counties in the South fall into the high category. Guess what happens when you drop a tornado or hurricane into the mix?

To make things worse, research has shown that tornado activity is ticking up in the South. Victor Gensini (Northern Illinois University) and Harold Brooks (NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory) found in a 2018 study that tornado frequency is shifting into the South. A Northern Illinois University press release said, “The researchers identified significant increasing trends of tornado reports and tornado environments in portions of Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky.” Unfortunately, I have seen misinterpretation of their findings. Gensini clarifies, “It’s not that Texas and Oklahoma do not get tornadoes….They’re still the number one location in terms of tornado frequency, but the trend in many locations is down over the past 40 years.”