For U.S. Meteorologists, Springtime Chaos Is a Regular Thing

New York Times

21-05-2025

Judson Jones, a meteorologist and reporter for The New York Times, covers extreme weather. And in the United States, a huge swath of land in Earth's middle latitudes where the forces of seasonal change clash, that means he's very busy.
'We see every natural disaster hazard the earth can throw,' Mr. Jones said. 'It all exists in the U.S.'
And spring means tornadoes.
A series of tornadoes killed at least 28 people in the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic this past weekend. Tornadoes touched down on the Great Plains on Monday. And at least 24 people died in a three-day outbreak in the South and the Midwest in March.
Mr. Jones explained the tornado phenomenon in two phone interviews on Monday. He spoke to Times Insider from Oklahoma, where he was embedded with a group of researchers looking for tornadoes to study.
The following exchange has been edited and condensed for clarity.
There have been several deadly tornado outbreaks this year. Is this season notable for destructive storms?
It's severe-weather season. It happens. We're running on average for the season, in terms of tornado output. What made the weekend bad is part of a continued trend of severe weather and tornadoes occurring in populated areas east of the Mississippi River.
When you think of tornado research and the 'Twisters' movie, you think of tornadoes happening on the Plains, right? Texas up to North Dakota; that's how people coined the phrase Tornado Alley. But tornadoes can happen in any state, and lately we've seen a trend of violent storms in more populated regions. That's what we saw on Saturday in Kentucky.
We had a similar amount of storms on Sunday in the Plains. It was more of a traditional severe-weather setup, but there are going to be fewer deaths on the Plains, because there's less population.
What are the conditions that set up a tornado outbreak, and why do outbreaks so often occur in the spring?
Spring is a transition season, and the earth is always trying to get into equilibrium. As we move to the summer season, warmer air is trying to push north, and cold air is still trying to push south. You get opposite air masses fighting each other for that space. There is a combination of warm, moist air coming out of the Gulf, dry air coming out of the Southwest and colder air coming out of the Northwest. This is combined with the jet stream, air around the altitude where planes fly that can have intense winds. All of these factors are fighting against one another.
How unique is the tornado phenomenon that occurs in the center of the United States? Do such outbreaks occur in other parts of the world?
The setup we have in the U.S. is kind of a perfect situation because you have that moisture from the Gulf and storms forming East of the Rockies. However tornadoes happen in the middle latitudes across the world. There are more across the U.S., but some of that has to do with the fact that we track them here.
Is it right to say that meteorologists still do not know how, exactly, tornadoes form?
Yes, believe it or not. Meteorologists still quite don't understand the mechanism that triggers a tornado. Why does this one storm produce a tornado but another storm with the same conditions doesn't? Meteorologists hope to find the answer, but they may not. Weather is chaos theory.
That must be frustrating for forecasters.
The good news is that since the 1990s, tornado warning times have improved. Outlooks have improved. Sometimes, we can see up to eight days ahead and say if there's a good chance that tornadoes are going to form on that particular day. We have high-resolution forecast models that allow us to draw a circle around a couple of counties and say, 'In this area, a tornado will almost definitely form.'
So there is more lead time, but you can still have tragic situations, like the one that happened over the weekend. There are a lot of questions over how we continue to help people. One of the things that we're doing at The Times is trying to give people a heads-up days in advance to say, 'Hey, this is a day you should watch.'
Our country is full of crazy weather. As a result, sometimes weather coverage can drift toward the sensational. How do you avoid that?
I want people to read my work, but I also want the audience to trust me. I feel like the best way to give information is to act as a doctor would in an office. I want to give readers the most likely scenario, but also point out the outliers. Then I want to walk away, allowing people to make their own informed decisions.