Tornado Days: May-Jul 2000-04 KS,NE,OK -1970-2004: 14 States

[joel ewing]

Oops....in my post above I neglected to thank Mike for taking the time and energy to compile the list in the first place.
BTW.......Mike, is your last name pron. "Goo-kus"? Thanks for the help there too!

 

[BColbert]

thanks for taking time for doing the research because i had no clue nebraska was up in the upper echeleons of tornado country, like texas,oklahoma, and kansas.

 

[joel ewing]

Oh yes, Nebraska is definitely a tornado heavyweight. If I'm not mistaken, their tornado count from 1950 thru 1995 put it at either #4 nationally or #5. I think Neb. is #5, with Florida #4. However, there are an awful lot of weak waterspouts that come ashore in Fla. that do basically no damage other than blow around some lawn chairs, etc. They would be akin to the "dust devils" of the southwest.....vortexes that are derived from rising air currents. rather than spawned by rotating storms. Yet these get counted as a tornado..and pushes up Florida's tornado tally, rather erroneously I believe.
Last May 24th the largest diameter tornado ever recorded in the United States was southwest of Lincoln...a F-4 monster that was offically measured at 2 1/2 miles wide!! The little town was named Hallam, and I went to college directly up the road from there in the mid 70's....and had a lot of frat bros. from Hallam.

 

[mikegeukes]

1953-2003 Number of Tornadoes by State

01. 6929 Texas
02. 2873 Oklahoma
03. 2675 Kansas
04. 2670 Florida
05. 2170 Nebraska

06. 1810 Iowa
07. 1717 Illinois
08. 1533 Colorado
09. 1495 Missouri
10. 1439 South Dakota

11. 1367 Louisiana
12. 1351 Mississippi
13. 1295 Arkansas
14, 1230 Minnesota
15. 1229 Alabama

16. 1086 Georgia
17. 1071 North Dakota
18. 1067 Indiana
19. 0981 Wisconsin
20. 0849 North Carolina

21. 0847 Michigan

Source: Storm Data

Mike

 

[BColbert]

nice research mike

 

[Warren Eckels]

Tornado density

I took Mike's tornado numbers and divided them by each state's area, then multiplied by 100 to come up with a tornado density. A circle with a radius of 5.64 sq miles covers 100 square miles. This does interesting things to the rankings:

01 FL 4.95
02 OK 4.18
03 KS 3.27
04 IA 3.24
05 LA 3.14
06 IL 3.09
07 IN 2.97
08 MS 2.88
09 NE 2.82
10 TX 2.65
11 AR 2.49
12 AL 2.42
13 MO 2.17
14 SD 1.90
15 GA 1.88
16 WI 1.81
17 NC 1.74
18 ND 1.55
19 MN 1.55
20 MI 1.49
21 CO 1.48

Of course, tornadoes in Illinois and Indiana often come in squall lines or HP supercells, both of which present their own added dangers while producing less photogenic storms. The tornado season here is also not as strongly defined as it is in Oklahoma. And, our tornadoes seem more likely to strike at night.

I suspect that squalls and/or HP supercells and/or tropical storms figure greatly in the South as well. At times, the archetypical Indiana tornado seems like an F2 on the south edge of a squall line striking at 2 am in the middle of a heavy rainstorm.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Im curious as to what Illinois' total tornado days would be for the 2000-2004 time period, as I know Illinois lead the nation by quite a bit in 2003...and was also very near the top in 2004.

 

[mikegeukes]

ILLINOIS

MAY TORNADO DAYS:
Illinois: 2000-2004 Tornado Days: May: 30 Tornado Days
05 Tornado Days: 2000: May
03 Tornado Days: 2001: May
05 Tornado Days: 2002: May
08 Tornado Days: 2003: May
09 Tornado Days: 2004: May

JUNE TORNADO DAYS:
Illinois: 2000-2004 Tornado Days: June: 11 Tornado Days
03 Tornado Days: 2000: June
00 Tornado Days: 2001: June
03 Tornado Days: 2002: June
04 Tornado Days: 2003: June
01 Tornado Days: 2004: June

JULY TORNADO DAYS:
Illinois: 2000-2004 Tornado Days: July: 10 Tornado Days
02 Tornado Days: 2000: July
02 Tornado Days: 2001: July
00 Tornado Days: 2002: July
03 Tornado Days: 2003: July
03 Tornado Days: 2004: July

01 Tornado Days: 2000-2004 March
13 Tornado Days: 2000-2004 April
06 Tornado Days: 2000-2004 August

MARCH TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
027 Tornado Days: Illinois

APRIL TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
074 Tornado Days: Illinois

MAY TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
111 Tornado Days: Illinois

JUNE TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
098 Tornado Days: Illinois

JULY TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
059 Tornado Days: Illinois

AUGUST TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
048 Tornado Days: Illinois

Research by: Mike Geukes (Copyright @2005, please do not copy my research LOL)
Source: NCDC Storm Events

Mike

 

[joel ewing]

Yes, it is interesting how that changes the rankings. But it's important not to forget how much of those square miles are "wasted" due to non-existant roads / populations non-existant. For example, Cherry county Nebraska.....in north central Nebraska....is one of or THE largest county in the lower 48 with the least amount of people. And Cherry county gets hammered with tornadoes....huge ones too! North Platte spots them on Doppler, but no one's out there to provide ground truth.....and there's not much there either to damage / provide damage assessments.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Thanks for the speedy info mike, you rock!

Confirms what I suspected...suckers, Illinois leads KS/OK/NE in May tornado days from 2000-2004 :lol: :wink:

 

[joel ewing]

What's the big deal about tornado "days" anyway?

 

[mikegeukes]

I like using tornado days, because its gives me a more representative look into tornado climatology.

Big outbreaks days, does skew the data, especially if the state, does not see many tornadoes. Also, I have a problem with the way tornadoes are being counted in the last couple of years. Of course there is a population bias too.

Mike

 

[Mike Johnston]

OK, let's look at which of the 3 states was the most consistent in tornado days. For the 2000-2004 time period, if you use the standard deviation to derive a variance, yields the following:

Seasonal tornado days, for May-June-July combined:

1. Kansas: Avg 13.6, 1 Std Deviation variance = 12%

2. Nebraska: Avg 14.4, 1 Std Deviation variance = 27%

3. Oklahoma: Avg 6.8, 1 Std Deviation variance = 17%


Therefore, you can say Kansas was the most consistent tornado producer from season to season, even though Nebraska had higher total numbers. Statistically, since 2 standard deviations +/- the average gives you about a 95% probability, you can say that you would have a 95% chance of seeing at least 10 tornado days per season in Kansas.

For the most consistent month, June has been closer in consistency to May than one might first assume:

KS-NE-OK combined, tornado days by month:

1. May: Avg 15.4, 1 Std Deviation variance = 21%

2. June: Avg 12.4, 1 Std Deviation variance = 17%

3. July: Avg 7.0, 1 Std Deviation variance = 26%

Therefore, you would have had a 95% chance of seeing at least 9 tornado days in May, but also a 95% chance of seeing at least 8 tornado days in June had you chased the 3-state area over this time period.

Of course, using only 5 years is probably too small of a population, but maybe we can expand the study later.

 

[joel ewing]

For Mike Geukes...btw...sorry if I missed it, but would you illustrate how you pronounce your last name, please?
And you stated that you don't like how tornadoes are counted these days. What do you mean....and .....if I'm guessing right....I'm in agreeance.

 

[mikegeukes]

Geukes is pronounced Jukes, like as in Juke Box. its a dutch name.

IOWA

MAY TORNADO DAYS:
Iowa: 2000-2004 Tornado Days: May: 16 Tornado Days
05 Tornado Days: 2000: May
01 Tornado Days: 2001: May
01 Tornado Days: 2002: May
01 Tornado Days: 2003: May
08 Tornado Days: 2004: May

JUNE TORNADO DAYS:
Iowa: 2000-2004 Tornado Days: June: 20 Tornado Days
05 Tornado Days: 2000: June
05 Tornado Days: 2001: June
05 Tornado Days: 2002: June
03 Tornado Days: 2003: June
02 Tornado Days: 2004: June

JULY TORNADO DAYS:
Iowa: 2000-2004 Tornado Days: July: 11 Tornado Days
04 Tornado Days: 2000: July
01 Tornado Days: 2001: July
01 Tornado Days: 2002: July
05 Tornado Days: 2003: July
01 Tornado Days: 2004: July

00 Tornado Days: 2000-2004 March
13 Tornado Days: 2000-2004 April
08 Tornado Days: 2000-2004 August

MARCH TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
017 Tornado Days: Iowa

APRIL TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
053 Tornado Days: Iowa

MAY TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
102 Tornado Days: Iowa

JUNE TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
144 Tornado Days: Iowa

JULY TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
103 Tornado Days: Iowa

AUGUST TORNADO DAYS: 1970-2004:
059 Tornado Days: Iowa

Research by: Mike Geukes (Copyright @2005, please do not copy my research LOL)
Source: NCDC Storm Events

Mike