Heavy equipment removes debris from a home destroyed by the May 20 tornado in the Plaza Towers neighborhood of Moore, Okla. In 2013, in the nation’s heartland, tornadoes are flirting with a record for the fewest, with just a bit more than half the normal number of nearly 1,300 twisters reported by mid-September. A shift in the jet stream is credited. Other damaging weather events have also eased.WASHINGTON – After a couple of years of wild, deadly and costly weather, the United States is mostly getting a lucky break this year. So far.
Summer is almost over, and as of Tuesday morning, not a single hurricane had formed this year. Tornado activity in 2013 is also down around record low levels, while heat waves are fewer and milder than last year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Meteorologists credit luck, shifts in the high-altitude jet stream, and African winds and dust.
“It’s been great,” said Deke Arndt, climate monitoring chief for NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. “I hope that we ride this pattern out through this year and following years.”
There have been eight tropical storms in the Atlantic. Not one has reached the 74 mph wind threshold to become a hurricane, though Tropical Storm Humberto off the coast of Africa is likely to become one soon.