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New research finally sheds some light on what the heck is happening.
If hurricanes, wildfires, heat, and floods are the Big Four of extreme weather in America, then tornadoes are perhaps the equivalent of the National Bowling League.
That’s not for lack of fatalities — tornadoes kill more people annually than hurricanes, per the 30-year average — nor for their lack of star power (see: The Wizard of Oz, Sharknado, Twister, and my most highly anticipated movie of the year, Twisters). But when it comes to the study of extreme weather, robust, detailed data on tornadic supercells has been described as “largely absent,” at least compared to the scholarship on their more popular meteorological counterparts.
This absence of data (as well as the complexity and unpredictability of the storms) has been a problem not just when it comes to forecasting tornadoes, but also in understanding how or even if they’re being affected by climate change. After at least 26 people were killed across eight states over Memorial Day weekend, this knowledge gap has felt especially urgent and worrisome.
But a new analysis of research recently published by the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology might at last shed some much-needed light on how tornadoes have changed in the last half-century. (The research has passed peer review but is not yet in its final published form.) According to the paper’s authors — Timothy Coleman of the University of Alabama in Huntsville; Richard Thompson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma; and Gregory Forbes, formerly of the Weather Channel — between 1951 and 2020, “tornadogenesis events” have trended both eastward and “away from the warm season, especially the summer, and toward the cold season.”
This is intriguing for several reasons. For one thing, it means more and more tornadoes are forming outside Tornado Alley (which runs north-south through the Great Plains) and in densely populated southeastern and midwestern states like Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and southwest Kentucky. We truly aren’t in Kansas anymore.
While spring is traditionally thought of as “tornado season” by those with storm cellars in their backyards, the authors of the paper also point to a rise in tornadoes during the “cold season,” defined as September through February. Such a shift in seasonality could potentially increase the destruction and disruption of tornadoes that catch people off guard over the holidays or simply unawares. The analysis indicates that the frequency of winter tornadoes has increased by a staggering 102% from 1951 to 2020, further underscoring the potential dangers of the changing seasonal patterns.
While the “causes of any geographic and seasonal shifts in tornado activity” were not within the scope of the analysis, the authors did offer a handful of insights. Some studies have suggested that decreasing sea ice might reduce summer tornadoes, and that the Pacific decadal oscillation and the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation could also play a role. Another researcher used numerical models to determine that “tornado environments may be less favorable in spring by the late 21st century” due to climate change. These conditions, in some part or combination, could potentially result in a reversal of the changes observed in the paper “in future years.”
For now, though, the analysis found the most significant decrease in annual tornadoes in eastern Kansas through Oklahoma and northern Texas, while the most significant increase was in southern Mississippi. The authors even offered a bit of real estate advice: avoid Jackson, Mississippi, which saw one of the greatest increases in tornadoes of any city in the United States, and exhale if you’ve recently purchased property in Cleburne, Texas, which saw one of the greatest decreases.
Much of avoiding disaster and tragedy comes down simply to being prepared, though. That, of course, requires knowing who should be making such preparations and when. While there is still much left to understand about tornadoes, the new analysis offers a better picture than what we had before.
But it’s still up to agencies to get the word out — and to Hollywood. The Twister sequel is reportedly set in Oklahoma.
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The Trump administration just did something surprising: It paved the way for a transmission line to a solar energy project.
On Friday, the Bureau of Land Management approved the Gen-Tie transmission line and associated facilities for the Sapphire Solar project, a solar farm sited on private lands in Riverside County, California, that will provide an estimated 117 megawatts to the Southern California Public Power Authority.
It is the first sign so far that some renewable energy requiring federal lands may be allowed to develop during the next four years, and is an about-face from the first weeks of Trump’s presidency.
BLM notably said the solar project’s transmission line will help “Unleash American Energy” (the bureau’s capitalization, not mine). And it said the move “aligns with” Trump’s executive order declaring a national energy emergency — which discussed only fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydropower — because it was “supporting the integrity of the electric grid while creating jobs and economic prosperity for Americans.”
“The Bureau of Land Management supports American Energy Dominance that prioritizes needs of American families and businesses,” BLM California State Director Joe Stout said in a statement provided via press release.
Another executive order Trump issued on his first day back in office paused solar and wind project permitting for at least 60 days, leading to a halt on government activities required to construct and operate renewable energy projects. It’s unclear whether these actions to move Sapphire’s transmission line through agency review means the federal permitting pipes are finally unstuck for the solar industry, or if this is an exception to the rule — especially because the pause Trump ordered has yet to hit the expiration date he set on the calendar.
For those keeping score, that’s three more than wanted to preserve them last year.
Those who drew hope from the letter 18 House Republicans sent to Speaker Mike Johnson last August calling for the preservation of energy tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act must be jubilant this morning. On Sunday, 21 House Republicans sent a similar letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith. Those with sharp eyes will have noticed: That’s three more people than signed the letter last time, indicating that this is a coalition with teeth.
As Heatmap reported in the aftermath of November’s election, four of the original signatories were out of a job as of January, meaning that the new letter features a total of seven new recruits. So who are they?
The new letter is different from the old one in a few key ways. First, it mentions neither the Inflation Reduction Act nor its slightly older cousin, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, by name. Instead, it emphasizes “the importance of prioritizing energy affordability for American families and keeping on our current path to energy dominance amid efforts to repeal or reform current energy tax credits.” The letter also advocates for an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy development that has long been popular among conservatives but has seemed to fall out of vogue under Trump 2.0.
Lastly, while the new letter repeats the previous version’s emphasis on policy stability for businesses, it adds a new plea on behalf of ratepayers. “As our conference works to make energy prices more affordable, tax reforms that would raise energy costs for hard working Americans would be contrary to this goal,” it reads. “Further, affordable and abundant energy will be critical as the President works to onshore domestic manufacturing, supply chains, and good paying jobs, particularly in Republican run states due to their business-friendly environments. Pro-energy growth policies will directly support these objectives.”
As my colleagues Robinson Meyer and Emily Pontecorvo have written, tariffs on Canadian fuel would raise energy prices in markets across the U.S. That includes some particularly swingy states, e.g. Michigan, which perhaps explains Rep. James’ seeming about-face.
Republicans’ House majority currently stands at all of four votes, so although 21 members might not be huge on the scale of the full House, they still represent a significant problem for Speaker Johnson.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Rep. James did not unseat Democrat Carl Marlinga in 2022 as the district had been newly created following the 2020 census.
Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.
Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.
Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.
The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”
So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.
So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.
Texas established a fund in 2023 to provide low-cost loans to new gas plants, but has had trouble finding viable projects. Engie pulled an 885 megawatt project from the program earlier this week, citing “equipment procurement constraints” and delays.
But PJM is working actively with a friendly administration in Washington to bring more natural gas to its grid. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently blessed a PJM plan to accelerate interconnection approvals for large generators — largely natural gas — so that it can bring them online more quickly.
But many developers and large power consumers are less than optimistic about the ability to bring new natural gas onto the grid at a pace that will keep up with demand growth, and are instead looking at “behind-the-meter” approaches to meet rising energy needs, especially from data centers. The asset manager Fortress said earlier this year that it had acquired 850 megawatts of generation capacity from APR Energy and formed a new company, fittingly named New APR Energy, which said this week that it was “deploying four mobile gas turbines providing 100MW+ of dedicated behind-the-meter power to a major U.S.-based AI hyperscaler.”
And all gas developers, whether they’re building on the grid or behind-the-meter, have to get their hands on turbines, which are in short supply. The NRG consortium called this out specifically, noting that it had secured the rights to two 7HA gas turbines by 2029. These kinds of announcements of agreements for specific turbines have become standard for companies showing their seriousness about gas development. When Chevron announced a joint venture with GE Vernova for co-located gas plants for data centers, it also noted that it had a reservation agreement for seven 7HA turbines. But until these turbines are made and installed, these announcements may all just be spin.