Bangladesh Tornado Alley
Jonathan D. Finch  



     
What are the causes of the Bangladesh tornado alley?



                          
Regional Topography/Bay of Bengal

High level jet                           


Places on the globe that have a lot of extreme severe weather have elevated mixed layers.     

Ranchi, India
Albuquerque(June 7  1990)
Albuquerque(June 21  1990)

      

An illustration of the Bangladesh/East Indian severe storm environment can be found here.
The result is a loaded gun type sounding that we see here in the plains.

May 22  1981

June 02  1995

May 17  2000



The Timline


India heats up and dries out in late March or early April.

Surface flow from the Bay of Bengal increases by late March and early April. This can be viewed as
a monsoon flow of sorts.


Westerly mid-level flow around the Tibetan Plateau advects the Indian mixed layer over the Bengal
moist tongue. This leads to the elevated mixed layer. Note that parts of the Indian desert
are  "elevated"(1-3000ft) compared to Bangladesh which is near sea lavel.

The southern branch of the polar jet often retreats north of the Tibetan Plateau by May, leaving light mid to
high level flow across the Bengal region.

           
All these factors result in a tornado maximum in early to mid April.



Bangladesh and east Indian Tornado Documentation
             
                 
                Previous work by (Peterson and Mehta, 1981), Ono, Qayyum and others
                  
                   Exhaustive search through newspaper microfilm from Bangladesh Newspapers(1950s to 1990s)

                    Individual tornado studies in journals

                   Additional help from
Ashraf M. Dewan
                   

All tornadoes

30 or more deaths

tornado details


Tornado Cases Examples

Surface and upper air charts for Bangladesh and east Indian tornadoes can be found here.

April 14  2004

March 20 2005

May 04 2003

May 13 1996

       
        Surface

      
        500mb


        200mb


April 26  1989
             
         
        Surface

        500mb

        200mb