Tornadoes around the world. Want to know who gets the most tornadoes?

[MatthewCarman]

I changed the words around but this is from "Extreme Weather" by Christopher C. Burt for sale at Amazon.com

America gets 75% of all tornadoes in the world with Canada coming in second at 5%. No other place in the world get's as many tornadoes as America or as many violent tornadoes as America and Canada.

Bagledash comes in #3 for the most anuall tornadoes. Bagledash has flat terrain like America and Canada. The country is very populated and has poor contructed buildings. This is why they get so many violent tornadoes. ( And possible the most frequent according to my weather book) Tremendous thunderstorms develop here at the begining of thier monsoon season, usually April and May, when deep tropical air masses colide with cool dry air spilling over the himalayas. A tornado on April 26, 1989, killed a reported 1,300 people north of Dacca possible the single most dealiest tornado in the world. A storm that struck Tangail, Bagledash on May, 13, 1995 killed 700 people. The intensity of these storms is unknown.

Russia gets alot of tornadoes and has had some strong to killer tornadoes. June 9, 1984, a tornado killed 400 people 150-200 miles north of Moscow and Russia does get violent tornadoes. Great britian recieves 30-35 weak tornadoes on average a year. A outbreak occured in Great Britian producing 104 tornadoes but little damage came from these tornadoes. France gets damaging tornadoes annualy like Great Britian but the F4-F5 (this was printed before the EF scale came out) tornadoes are almost unheard of in these countires.

South Africa gets strong tornadoes and some very large hail each year. An outbreak between November, 30 and Dec, 2 killed 31 people in the towns of Albertynesville and Paynesville near Johannesburg.

Australia and New Zealand see about 25 tornadoes a year and occasionaly they get as strong as a F3 tornado. Japan sees about 20 tornadoes (Dragon Whirls) a year and some occur in winter called snownadoes. One such tornado (occured inwinter as a snownado my book says) hit the coastal city of Marbora 20 miles southeast of Tokyo on december 1, 1990. This violent F4 tornado damaged or destroyed over 1000 homes and injured 100 people.

Tornadoes in Argentina are rare but they are sometimes violent. Most occur in the states of Cordoba and Santa Fe. January 10, 1997, a powerfull tornado occured in this region killing atleast 54 people and destroying over 500 homes


Now I am not talking about unreported tornadoes. Tornado expert Thomas Grazulis said that Russia probibly recieves the largest absolute number of tornadoes after the United States, due to it's vast size and potential for small tornadoes. So ethier way you look at it going by reported tornadoes Canada is #2 and going by un reported tornadoes Russia may be #2.

 

[Bill Hark]

I assume you are going by total numbers instead of numbers of tornadoes per unit of land area. I think the UK has the most tornadoes per unit land area though they are generally weak.
With more video cameras, digital cameras with video and especially crummy cell phone video, we are seeing more non US tornado videos and images. I have seen nice video from most of the discussed countries except for Bangladesh.

I wish somebody would compile some of that non US tornado video and make it available.

Bill Hark

 

[MatthewCarman]

I assume you are going by total numbers instead of numbers of tornadoes per unit of land area. I think the UK has the most tornadoes per unit land area though they are generally weak.
With more video cameras, digital cameras with video and especially crummy cell phone video, we are seeing more non US tornado videos and images. I have seen nice video from most of the discussed countries except for Bangladesh.

I wish somebody would compile some of that non US tornado video and make it available.

Bill Hark

I realy dont know I took this out of my weather book. I do know most tornadoes in Great Britian occur from North Midland to Kent according to my weather book. Cant answer your question but mabey someone else can.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I realy dont know I took this out of my weather book. I do know most tornadoes in Great Britian occur from North Midland to Kent according to my weather book. Cant answer your question but mabey someone else can.

Matthew,

If that was a copy and paste of copyrighted material, then you need to include a citation for that work (name of book, name of author, publisher, copyright date, etc). Please differentiate between your own comments and the ideas/comments/stats taken from the book. Thanks!

7. Third-party content. Stormtrack is founded on principles of integrity and original content. We expect our users to uphold these principles. Third-party material such as quotes, news stories, weather data, statistics, and reference information may not be posted on the Stormtrack forum unless it is (1) clearly provided as a brief quote or citation and (2) includes informative comments by the poster. For exceptions please contact a Moderator or Administrator in advance.

 

[B Ozanne]

I agree, I don't think anybody beats the US even with unreported tornados.

But I do think Australia and Argentina have much higher numbers. Amongst other countries. Its just a population issue.

 

[scott r currens]

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." Benjamin Disraeli

This quote definitely applies when discussing tornado statistics, especially worldwide tornado statistics. How can one compare the climatology of tornadoes in a country that doesn’t track them to one that tracks tornado reports?

Bagledash comes in #3 for the most anuall tornadoes. Bagledash has flat terrain like America and Canada. The country is very populated and has poor contructed buildings. This is why they get so many violent tornadoes. ( And possible the most frequent according to my weather book) Tremendous thunderstorms develop here at the begining of thier monsoon season, usually April and May, when deep tropical air masses colide with cool dry air spilling over the himalayas. A tornado on April 26, 1989, killed a reported 1,300 people north of Dacca possible the single most dealiest tornado in the world. A storm that struck Tangail, Bagledash on May, 13, 1995 killed 700 people. The intensity of these storms is unknown.

Population per square kilometer:
Bangladesh 985
US 31
Argentina 14

Tornadoes in Argentina are rare but they are sometimes violent. Most occur in the states of Cordoba and Santa Fe. January 10, 1997, a powerfull tornado occured in this region killing atleast 54 people and destroying over 500 homes.

It is impossible to know how many tornadoes occur in Argentina on a yearly basis because no one is keeping track of them in an organized effort. How many tornadoes hit western Kansas from 1900-1950? How many were violent? You can look at all the historic news papers you want but that will never tell you the real story. Today we all know that Western Kansas gets many storm tornadoes. The problem is that most of the world has a tornado climatology that is as accurate as what we have from 1900-1950 in western Kansas. There is a lot of evidence that central Argentina has the most violent storms on earth.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/intense_storms.html
I read somewhere that they have the highest rate have agricultural hail damage insurance claims in the world. Despite the lack of any solid evidence I think there is a high probability that the central plains of Argentina have as many strong to violent tornadoes as the central plains of the US.

 

[MatthewCarman]

I fixed it Jeff. I always credit the auther just forgot sorry.

 

[Stuart Robinson]

I just got back home after a 5 week chase in the USA so forgive me for this short post I do want to expand on this subject.…
My organisation www.torro.org.uk that I belong too has been seriously researching tornadic occurrences within the UK since 1972 – indeed we came up with our own T-Scale for tornado ratings a full year before Dr. F. came out with the F-Scale however it was also Dr. F. who suggested that the UK has a Very high occurrence of tornadoes per our unit area - our research always suggested that on average we experienced some 35 tornados per year – however the last five year average has been running at nearly 50! (more reports coming into TORRO due to the internet boom)
We take pains to conduct a site investigation into almost all the tornadic occurrences (unless video confirms tornado) in order to confirm / deny that a tornado actually happened – only them will it get into our database.
The reason why the UK gets so many tornados is that we don’t has a “season” and that tornados occur all year round. In the summer you will find them inland – while the winter (due to the gulf stream) we find them around the coasts.
UK tornados are on the whole weak – However an F2 tornado is possible (28th July 2005 – Birmingham for example)
IMO the most tornadic prone area of the world is NW Okalahoma – but in recent years this has not been the case.

 

[Brandon Goforth]

IMO the most tornadic prone area of the world is NW Okalahoma – but in recent years this has not been the case.

I agree that W/NW OK is the most likely place to see a tornado in the world...and potentially strong to violent ones at that. I made a post a few days ago in this thread http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=12837&page=3 about Oklahoma tornado stats, and while the last couple of years the total number of tornadoes has been quite low (low for OK that is), it is certainly not uncommon to see the area go into a slump like this, particularly referring back to 1987-1990. In fact, the only bad years since 2000 have been '02, '05, and '06. '03 and '04 were above average years. I don't know what the count is so far for this year. I figure things will get cooking again in OK soon enough. I just think many people are still spoiled from that insane '99 season. But the slump hasn't been long enough for me to re-consider OK being the best place in the world to see a tornado. BTW, how many tornado warnings have been issued so far this year for Harper County, OK??? Quite a few if I remember correctly...

 

[MJ Poore]

Here in South Africa we get big killer torndoes reported every year. Statistically every ten years or so we get a 100+ km long F4+- type event. On average 3 people die in tornado related events yearly here, out of a population of 45 million. Lightening kills 50 people a year here, so that's where all the funding goes. But the problem is the country is so vast, few tornadoes are ever investigated. Fewer are even reported. The only ones that are reported are the bigger events that actually hit something, like a town or a village. So it's quite difficult to make a determination of just how many there really are out there. Certainly we do see lots of supercells on the radar with hook echoes.

I have been to Bangladesh and do plan to chase there one day. It's hard to say if they get many tornadoes, with population of 150 million in a place the size of Oklahoma, even a 20 km track tornado is going to run over a lot of people. Tornado reports from there are based on body counts, its's strange no site investigations have ever been done there.

In the UK where I have lived for 5 years and where my parents come from, they get a lot of what we in the rest of the world might call landspouts or non mesocyclonic spin ups, but they call them tornadoes there and that cranks up the figures, I am sure. Imagine if every country in the world reported whirlwinds and landspouts as tornadoes. In South Africa we would have over 10 000 tornadoes reported a year!!

 

[Steven Williams]

A landspout is a tornado. Surely the NWS include them in their tornado count.

You would think Russia would have an extremely short tornado season given its short summer and the fact it is largely cut off from moisture.

 

[Menno van der Haven]

As said before, it is a population-issue.
Also it can make a huge difference when it's easy to report them to national weather services or other tornado counting organisations. A few years ago there were even countries in eastern Europe who said that they didn't occur there (because they were not reported), this however, is changing there too.

For my country, The Netherlands, in 2006 there were more then 100 confirmed tornado's on a area of roughly half the state of Oklahoma. About 90 occured in an incredibly active augusus-month.
On average annualy there are between 20 and 50 tornadoes in The Netherlands. Most of them are F-0 or F-1 and of the spout-type. I think per square miles this density comes close to what is reported in the UK and in Oklahoma.

 

[MJ Poore]

Good point about Eastern Europe Menno.

Some say Romania and Hungary have the highest incidences of tornadoes in Europe and that's a recent observation, because people didnt know about them before. The two counties have some of the best geography in Europe to get big storms going. I see Romania even has a US style doppler radar network now. But exactly how many they get, and how strong they are, I dont know.

 

[Menno van der Haven]

Good point about Eastern Europe Menno.

Some say Romania and Hungary have the highest incidences of tornadoes in Europe and that's a recent observation, because people didnt know about them before. The two counties have some of the best geography in Europe to get big storms going. I see Romania even has a US style doppler radar network now. But exactly how many they get, and how strong they are, I dont know.

You are right about that, MJ Poore,
Two years' ago I was in Romania and I was lucky to watch a tornado near Tirgu Mures. However, the locals didn't believe me when I told them that I had seen a tornado in their area. They said: oh, that were rain-curtains. Only when I showed them this picture:

they were convinced

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

There used to be someone on the board who lived in China and would occasionally post threads about the storms they were getting over there -- it'd be down season here, and he'd be posting radar grabs from the Chinese weather service of classic flying eagles with well defined hooks. I don't know much about China's climatology, but I suspect that that region of their country sees their fair share of tornadoeas.