When a hurricane hits land, it's not just the hurricane itself that causes damage. As it moves over land and becomes a tropical depression, it can create numerous tornadoes across multiple states.
Bill Burton: It's time for us to take a look at the Science Behind the Forecast as I am joined by WAVE 3 meteorologist Tawana Andrew. Good morning, Tawana.
Tawana Andrew: Good morning. We've talked about hurricane Beryl before but we're just going to add on to all of the records that it continues to break.
BB: You just got your hands on a lot of data about Beryl including how many tornadoes that hurricane spawned. Walk us through what you learned.
TA: So first Hurricane Beryl. I think a lot of people remember it was the earliest category 4 and 5 hurricane in Atlantic basin history. And then it was the second category 5 hurricane in July. Hurricane Emily in 2005 was the first. So in that regard, it was already breaking records.
Now once it made landfall in Texas, it just decided that it wanted to be an extra overachiever and continued to break records. So usually with a tropical system, the warm moist tropical air, working with wind shear near the earth's surface, can lead to tornado development, and we saw so many tornadoes with Beryl. Keep in mind on average, we see 65 tropical cyclone related tornadoes in the U.S. each year. Okay, Hurricane Beryl on its own, dropped 65 tornadoes between July 8 And July 10.
BB: Essentially, a year's worth of tornadoes from one storm.
TA: Basically, storms spawned tornadoes from Louisiana and Texas to Arkansas, to Indiana and to Kentucky and New York as well. So it did not leave out a single part of the country as it moved on by. The last time we had a hurricane with a tornado count this high was Rita. That was back in September 2005. And that caused 97 tornadoes. And the one, the tropical cyclone that created the most tornadoes in U.S. history was Hurricane Ivan in 2004. And that caused 118 tornadoes. Yes, that's an incredible amount.
Most of Beryl's tornadoes were in Louisiana, they saw 43 separate touchdowns. And that was the National Weather Service in Shreveport's highest single day tornado count since 1995. That's incredible. And then the strongest tornado we saw with what was left of Beryl, that walloped to Mount Vernon, Indiana.
I know, the pictures and the videos from that went viral as it was an EF3 tornado and typically we do not see tornadoes that strong with tropical cyclones. In fact, 94% of tropical tornadoes are usually EF0, or EF1 and that does, does include the tornadoes that don't create any damage. 94%. So the fact that we had that EF3 was way out of what's normal for a system like this. And keep in mind that 40% of tropical cyclone related tornadoes actually happen when the storm is a tropical depression or a remnant low. Only 27% of the tornadoes happen when it's actually a hurricane. And 33% happened when it is a tropical storm. So we tend to see more tornadoes, the weaker the system gets, and the farther inland it goes.
