A tale of two hurricanes
The 2004 hurricane season was the first of back-to-back devastating hurricane seasons for the U.S. There were so many hurricanes during the 2004 and 2005 seasons, that it is easy to overlook some of them, or even confuse them. How about Frances and Jeanne that followed similar paths in 2004. When Frances went inland across the Southeast, it produced 101 tornadoes, of which 45 touched down in South Carolina.
Just three weeks later, Hurricane Jeanne followed a similar path, but did not produce nearly the tornadoes that Frances did. It was still a destructive storm, and produced 23 tornadoes, of which 14 touched down in South Carolina.
Although the two storms followed similar paths, there were other differences. Frances was a slow moving storm, and was bringing in moisture off the Atlantic Ocean. This moist air helped enhance the rainbands, which allowed more tornadoes to form. Jeanne moved much faster than Frances, and was moving into much drier air. This dry air decreased the size of the rainbands and the number of thunderstorms, which led to fewer tornadoes.
Posted by
on 11/06 at 08:40 PM
