Oklahoma City: Amazing Tornado Facts!!

[Bill Tabor]

Found this page on Oklahoma City - aka King of Tornadoes, Tornado Mecca - might as well call it 'Tornadoville'.

Oklahoma City has been hit 116 times since 1890!!

Here is a detailed webpage that discusses this fact and other amazing things about this town - such as:
1) 18 times it's been hit by two (or more) tornadoes on the same day
2) hit by 9 F4 & F5's; 5 on a single day
3) Longest period without a tornado 5 years 8 months and then struck by 11 torns in the next 11 months.
4) Since 1950 - only 4 periods of greater than 2 years without a tornado
and More....

Check it out:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/tornadodata/ok...okc_tornado.php

 

[Andrea Griffa]

Bill, that's simply incredible..I really didn't imagine that so many tornado did hit Ok city; ok, I knew that was a city with an high number of strong tornadoes in the story but not in this way!

 

[David Draun]

Wow! :shock: Then it's just a matter of time before that bubble POPS!

 

[j_scheerer]

Anyone wanna get me a green card? I feel like moving to Oklahoma.

 

[Gabe Garfield]

MAN, it feels good to be an Okie.

Gabe

 

[Chris Lott]

Check this out-Most "Important" tornadoes by state. The statistics they used in this is basically based on injuries and fatalities. I doesn't give the f -scale of the tornadoes that it lists, however.

http://www.tornadoproject.com/alltorns/worstts.htm

 

[Andy Wehrle]

That reminds me...the other day I was heading to the Student Union, and I overheard this girl b****ing about how cold she was, and with no trace of irony in her voice, she said "They have normal weather in Oklahoma".

 

[Alex Lamers]

Woot :shock: good stuff for me...I'll cya all in the tornado capital in the Fall

 

[Chris Lott]

Hey guys, this might be a dumb question but after looking at the map on the link it looks to be a pretty populated area in and around OKC-I've never been there. Is it good chase territory in OKC and the surrounding area? I've heard west of I-35 has better road network.

 

[Bill Hamilton]

Originally posted by Chris Lott
Hey guys, this might be a dumb question but after looking at the map on the link it looks to be a pretty populated area in and around OKC-I've never been there. Is it good chase territory in OKC and the surrounding area? I've heard west of I-35 has better road network.

The road network west of I-35 is usually pretty good with roads every mile (section lines). Eastern OK is a totally different world though.
As far as chasing in or around OKC, OK try to avoid it because it can be a nightmare unless you know the surface streets and county roads :wink:
Every yahoo and their uncle gets out with their disposable 35mm camera and become "chasers"! (June 13th 1998, May 3rd 1999, May 8th & 9th 2003 are prime examples)

 

[Bryce Stone]

I think the main reason why the OKC area has been hit by so many tornadoes is simply because of its size. The greater OKC metro is (if memory serves me correctly) one of the largest geographical areas in the U.S. for the population it contains. Simply, OKC is spread out more than comparable cities, so the number of tornados attributed to the city is higher than you might see in, for example, Amarillo. I seem to remember reading somewhere about how the size of OKC relates to its tornado count, but I can't for the life of me remember where. Of course, the fact that Oklahoma City is in an area of high tornado frequency helps.

And yes, I found it very frustrating to try to chase anywhere in the OKC area. It's like a circus. I remember driving down I-44 the night of May 9th, 2003 and a cop was driving about thirty down the interstate in the middle of the two lanes. There were a bunch of people trying to pass him, but he would swerve and cut them off when they tried. Looking back now it was quite comical, but at the time it was VERY frustrating. I'd followed the power flashes all the way from the west side of Yukon (actually followed the storm in from Union City) and he kept me from staying with the storm (or maybe I should blame myself for getting on the interstate . . .).

EDIT: I just read the article, and I see that they also mentioned how large the OKC metro area is. They included many of the surrounding cities like Moore, Midwest City, and Choctow which makes the area of discussion quite large.

 

[mikegeukes]

Some stats on the land area in square miles.

Oklahoma City is very large city with 607 square miles in land area.

Land area: 5.2 square miles: Bethany
Land area: 27.1 square miles: Choctaw
Land area: 7.5 square miles: Del City
Land area: 2.1 square miles: Forest Park
Land area: 13.7 square miles Jones
Land area: 24.6 square miles: Midwest City
Land area: 21.7 square miles: Moore
Land area: 12.0 square miles: Mustang
Land area: 2.0 square miles: Nichols Park
Land area: 3.3 square miles: Nicoma Park
Land area: 607.0 square miles: Oklahoma City
Land area: 5.3 square miles: Spencer
Land area: 2.5 square miles: The Village
Land area: 0.3 square miles: Valley Brook
Land area: 2.8 square miles: Warr Acres
Land area: 25.8 square miles: Yukon

Crutcher and Witcher could not find land area.

Source: City Data

Map of central Oklahoma showing immediate Oklahoma City, Oklahoma area.

Source: NWS Norman

Mike
There are very few jobs in meteorology.

 

[Bill Tabor]

OKC is fairly large, but I think a lot of cities are larger. Ft Worth / Dallas is much larger. There aren't that many large cities in the southern plains really. Tulsa, Wichita, Kansas City to name most.

Regardless of it's size I think OKC primarily gets hit because it is the climatological bullseye of tornadic activity historically.

 

[Scott A. Kampas]

OKC is huge for its population (3rd largest in the country in geographical area); and the distinction needs to be clear whether it is city limits or metropolitan area under consideration. Only if the area within the city limits of Dallas and Ft. Worth are combined is there a larger city in areal coverage. Also, much of the area within the OKC city limits is not yet built, the urbanized area is 244 mi². Here is a sampling of areas of several cities:

Dallas: 385.0 mi² + Ft. Worth: 298.9 mi² = Total: 683.9 mi²
Oklahoma City: 621.2 mi²
Kansas City MO: 318.0 mi² + Kansas City KS: 127.8 mi² = Total: 445.8 mi²
Nashville: 526.1 mi²
Indianapolis: 368.1 mi²
Chicago: 234.0 mi²
Tulsa: 186.8 mi²
Birmingham: 151.9 mi²
Omaha: 118.9 mi²
Little Rock: 116.8 mi²
Lubbock: 114.9 mi²
Amarillo: 90.3 mi²
Des Moines: 77.2 mi²
Louisville: 66.6 mi²
St. Louis: 66.2 mi²
Topeka: 57.0 mi²
Wichita: 53.6 mi²
Ft. Smith: 52.9 mi²

OKC's downtown CBD has not yet been hit, however, several other city cores have been hit, some more than once. Among these are Ft. Worth, St. Louis, Nashville, Omaha, Lubbock, Waco, Indianapolis, and Louisville. The City of St. Louis in fact has been hit 9x, including the two most damaging tornadoes (by far) in history and the third deadliest in U.S. history. Other major tornado events have struck cities away from downtown or in the metro area including Kansas City, Chicago, Worcester, Birmingham, Dallas, Wichita Falls, and St. Louis.

It's well known that tornado reports increase markedly in populated areas which biases the database. Here is some more interesting city tornado information:

Downtown Tornadoes (Edwards, Schaefer)
Time Series of Annual Cycle of Tornado Days at Selected Sites (Brooks)
Normalized Damage from Major Tornadoes in the United States: 1890-1999 (Brooks & Doswell) {more or less cities}

Various world capitals have been hit, including Washington DC (1814 and 1888), London (1091), Vienna (1873), Paris (1669), Moscow (1904), Panama City (1992), and Singapore (1950). Tornadoes have also struck Calcutta (1838), Tokyo (1964 et al), and other metro areas of national capitals and "global cities". The tornado that hit DC in 1814 killed British soldiers during the occupation and burning of the city during the War of 1812.

 

[Shane Adams]

If I had to pick a US city to sit and wait in for a tornado, I'd pick Oklahoma City.