Are tornadoes hitting the Pittsburgh area more often? Here's what the NWS says.

Since mid-May, the National Weather Service has confirmed 14 tornadoes in southwestern Pennsylvania. So, are tornadoes happening more often? 

"It's not a simple answer of are there more tornadoes happening," said Matthew Kramar, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh.

Kramar said that compared to years ago, the NWS is getting more reports because storms are happening more often, and more people are looking for tornadoes and recording them with their phones. Experts can also look for them in ways they weren't able to before, and they better understand the scientific processes.

"The radar technology has improved, where we can actually detect more circulations with greater detail," Kramar said.

As for climate change, he said it's difficult to attribute it to the tornadoes in the Pittsburgh region, or at least as a primary factor.

"The ingredients that go into a tornado are very localized and often modified by the storm itself, so the storm can create a localized environment that favors a tornado," Kramar said.

After all of the destruction seen from county to county these past weeks, do people need to be prepared to see tornadoes all summer long? Kramar said the answer is no.

"The less wind flow there is, the less likely a tornado is to happen," Kramar said.

Those wind patterns change between spring and summer. Kramar said meteorologists see the most tornadoes from April through July, and we're still in that transition period.

"We have had tornadoes in the summer, but they're typically associated with stronger weather systems that come through, and those become much less frequent as we go into the summertime," Kramar said.