Why Is SE Wyoming Seeing So Much Severe Weather This Year?

Wyoming residents are no strangers to severe spring and summer weather.

Tornadoes, damaging winds, large hail, flash floods, we see them all on a fairly regular basis. Certainly, a twister or two or a hailstorm that dents some cars isn't something that raises too many eyebrows in the Cowboy State.

But the spring/early summer of 2023 seems to be something else again. For example, Thursday night Laramie Police posted that people should shelter in place after flooding hit the area and funnel clouds were spotted.

A tornado was spotted on Casper Mountain Thursday as well. And it's not like yesterday was some kind of an outlier in otherwise calm, placid weather patterns

It seems that almost every day the Cheyenne Office of the National Weather Service has issued special weather statements or warnings pertaining to some kind of weather issue, be it tornadoes, flash floods, or hail.

So we put the question to Cheyenne-based meteorologist Don Day Junior. Is 2023 really worse than usual for severe weather than usual? He gave us this response: ''It is certainly more than the last three springs and summers, we last saw a similar pattern to this in 2018."

So the natural next question is, why is this happening? "La Niña being over is the biggest reason, a wet spring also means more severe weather."

So can we expect this to continue? Day's response was that "the pattern is going to stay active for at least another week, and the threat for occasional severe weather will be with us into early September."

Day is the founder and President of Dayweather Inc. in Cheyenne.

So why does the end of La Nina tend to cause more severe weather?