Dixie Alley is a nickname sometimes given to areas of the southern United States that are particularly vulnerable to strong or violent tornadoes. This is distinct from the better known Tornado Alley.
Description
Dixie Alley includes areas of the lower Mississippi Valley, including the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, the upper Tennessee Valley, northern and central Alabama, northern Georgia, and Upstate South Carolina. Although tornadoes are less frequent in these states than they are in the southern Plains, the southeastern states have had more tornado-related deaths than any of the Plains states (excluding Texas). This is in part due to the relatively high number of strong/violent long tracked tornadoes and higher population density of this region. According to the National Climatic Data Center, for the period January 1, 1950 – October 31, 2006, Alabama and Kansas received the largest amount of F5 tornadoes.
According to a research made in 2007 by Dr. Walker Ashley in the American Meteorological Society, a number of factors explained the higher number of tornado fatalities in the Dixie Alley area. Dr. Ashley stated that the south is more susceptible to nighttime killer tornadoes, that it has the highest percentage of manufactured homes in the US (where 63% of the overall fatalities occur), and that there are more heavily forested areas. He further explained that there is a lack of a focused tornado season which can lead to complacency - the region occasionally has tornadoes much earlier than the general national peak (May and June), and several notorious outbreaks have struck during the late winter and early spring and also in late fall. After the 2008 Super Tuesday tornado outbreak in February 2008 that hit the Dixie Alley killing 57 people, many people indicated that they had underestimated the threat of severe weather on that day since it was well before the peak of tornado season.
Complicating matters is that tornadoes are rarely visible in this area, as they are more likely to be rain-wrapped (embedded in shafts of heavy rain), and that the hilly topography and heavily forested landscape makes them difficult to see.[1]
In April 2011, a severe tornado outbreak struck the area, killing over 300 people. Other notorious outbreaks affecting the region include the 1884 Enigma tornado outbreak, the April 1924 tornado outbreak, the 1932 Deep South tornado outbreak, the 1936 Tupelo-Gainesville tornado outbreak, the April 1957 Southeastern tornado outbreak, the 1984 Carolinas tornado outbreak, and the November 1992 tornado outbreak. The 1974 Super Outbreak also hit the area very hard, producing multiple F5 storms in Alabama, and F4 storms in North Georgia and the Appalachian southwest of North Carolina.
References
- ^ Service Assessment on the Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak of February 5-6, 2008, John L. Hayes, NOAA, March 2009
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