Lowest tornado count in 25 yrs for Kansas

[Craig Norris]

obviously all of you who had a frustrating year chasing in my great state already knew this. I'm curious if there is any historical data showing that lulls in tornado numbers precede larger scale follow-up seasons. This chart shows some pretty clear upward trending in years post down years but I'm skeptical as the graph shows a pretty continuous cycle of busy vs non-busy seasons.





http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article5095263.html

 

[Jeff Duda]

The only thing that plot shows is that inactive years tend to be isolated (i.e., extended tornado droughts are pretty much unheard of). It doesn't say anything about the following years being above average in terms of activity. It's all about perspective, though. Chasers who experienced low activity will see a following average season as much more active. Residents of Kansas (and Oklahoma, too - barring a tornado occurrence in the next 36 hours, Oklahoma will set a new record for fewest tornadoes in a calendar year at 16) will also see seasons following inactive seasons as being more active.

 

[JamesCaruso]

That's a pretty amazing stat, no tornado watches in the Wichita area in 2014, and only two going back to 2013!

EDIT: sorry for duplicate post, first one did not show up until I posted the second...

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[Adam Lucio]

This chart says it all. Tornado numbers vary wildly from year to year, but I find the back to back to back near record minimum of the past 3 years interesting.

 

[Jeff Hawkins]

This chart says it all. Tornado numbers vary wildly from year to year, but I find the back to back to back near record minimum of the past 3 years interesting.

It would be interesting to compare year to year # of tornadoes to # of deaths. For example, 2014 shows to be one of the lowest tornado counts, but how about the # of deaths? Is it also the lowest? It would be interesting to see what the correlation is, if any.

 

[TJKLECKNER]

Its safe to say we hit bottom in 2014....Lets hope for a better 2015!

 

[JamesCaruso]

I would love to blame my lack of success over the past three years on the staggering chart that Adam posted... Maybe for 2012 and 2014 I can... But that last two weeks of May 2013 was incredibly packed with opportunities regardless of what the overall year looked like, and I have no one but myself and the vagaries of weather/chasing to blame for my failures during that particular period...

 

[Skip Talbot]

Last year was a Nebraska year. Maybe this year will be a Kansas year, or maybe an Oklahoma, Texas, or South Dakota year.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

The lack of tornadoes in the last few years is kind of ominous in some respects. As far as the statistics are concerned, anyway. It appears to be anomalous in that there hasn't been that low numbers of tornado events in three consecutive years. Think that having said that, it can only go up from there. That too is speculation - of course. But looking a the graph, one sees years that had low counts that bounced back significantly - eg 1988. Or is the current trend an equalization for 2004?

Has the NWS given a long tem climate report/link as to what the next 3 months looks like?

 

[rdale]

Yes, the CPC issues temp and precip forecasts in 3 month intervals out to a year. http://cpc.ncep.noaa.gov

 

[Royce Sheibal]

As a native and current Nebraskan, and having been chasing for 10 years, 2014 has easily been our most active year in recent history, not just for chasing, but tornadoes overall. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this will be the 1st time Nebraska has led the country in annual tornadoes? After several terrible years for chasing here, the last two have been much more chasable. That's not without its downside. My 1st couple of years here we were lucky to see 1 or 2 other chasers on the road, this year it was a convoy everywhere you went.

As for the statistics side, a strong el-nino this year heading into the spring could ruin the chances for early spring deep south / traditional spring outbreaks yet again. El nino years (and la nina years) tend to foster lower tornado totals.

 

[StephenHenry]

I've definitely bemoaned the fact that after a lifetime of loving storms, the 3 years I'm finally able to start chasing are 2012-2014. Like Jeff H., I was curious about the relationship between tornado counts and deaths - trying to put a silver lining on the last 3 years.

I couldn't find the actual de-trended data from the SPC graph (and for the life of me, I couldn't find the paper where they discuss their de-trending methodology), so I did a naive de-trending myself based on raw actual counts (not LSRs). This basically meant adding 12.8 tornadoes for each year prior to 2014. I also guessed at the final raw tornado count for 2014, using the historical average of actual count = 90% LSR count. When all things are said and done, MAYBE 2014 wasn't as low as 2013, but those last few tornadoes in LA/MS sure didn't help my season any

Tornado deaths we pretty easy to gather. I still can't believe 2011. Note that the linear fit is pretty terrible, but it does show a tiny downward trend of 1/3 death per year.

Now for the correlation. This is definitely a pretty interesting graph. I'm sure the CC would be much stronger if we counted only the tornadoes greater than EF3. So even though 2012-2014 were far to the left for tornado count, there have definitely been lower years in terms of deaths. Basically, we want more 2004s.

 

[Shane Adams]

FWIW, Oklahoma recorded its lowest tornado count in 26 years, which is also the lowest total ever recorded since records have been kept.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

FWIW, Oklahoma recorded its lowest tornado count in 26 years, which is also the lowest total ever recorded since records have been kept.

It's all Craig Maire's fault for moving here.

Will say, I never thought there'd be a year where Michigan had more tornado reports than Oklahoma and Michigan not have any big outbreak.

 

[Bob Hartig]

Michigan got "scrap" tornadoes this year, which is the norm, but a couple of them were pretty interesting. One was a "lake breeze" tornado that spun up from a garden variety single-cell thunderstorm in the southeast side of the state. The main event, if you can call it that, was an EF1 that blew through my old neighborhood back in July. KGRR did a great analysis of the role gravity waves played in that storm's tornadogenesis.