Tornado Alley is shifting to the east due to climate change. But to be more specific, climate change is tampering with something called a dry line.

A dry line is the line where dry air meets with moist air. An example of this for the United States is the hot dry air from the deserts of Nevada, California, and Arizona meeting with the moist air of the Gulf of Mexico. This dry line usually ends up in states such as Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, which are of course where Tornado Alley has famously been until now. There are dry lines all over the world, for example, they are in South Africa.

The way that climate change tampers with this dry line is by increasing the temperature. By increasing the temperature, it dries more and more of the moist air area, which is mostly the east of the United States. This leads to the dry line shifting further and further east since that dry air from the west side of the United States is currently expanding further and further into the east coast.

Now, since this Dry Line is shifting east, there will be a higher possibility of tornado outbreaks further east in states such as Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. This is not only bad because there is projected to be more powerful tornadoes, but also because Tornado Alley is shifting to more densely populated areas instead of the far less populated farmland of the midwest.

Overall, this shifting of the dry line could possibly put more lives in danger than it ever has, mostly due to the fact that areas that currently don’t receive the strongest or tornadoes at all will be at a higher risk since the shift of the dry line. Residents should continue to check local news stations and NOAA updates or the National Weather Service for tornado watches and warnings.