Tornadoes per USA State question

[Peter Kirk]

Hi all, first post here. I've done a tornado climatology study of the UK from 1980 to 2004. Now I wanted to compare some of the activity levels here to activity levels of the top five tornadically active states in the USA over the same period using a per 10,000km2 figure. I had initially taken the data from the NCDC storm events data base but I've just noticed in the FAQ it says "Tornadoes may contain multiple segments. A tornado that crosses a county line or state line is considered a seperate segment." So that means my values must be a little too high.

The annual summary reports only go back to 1996 and the only data in the 2004 report is the 1953-2004 average. Is there anywhere I can find and easily search for the actual number of reported tornadoes for these five following states over my chosen period? I had found these states to be Florida, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas. It is only a small bit of my paper to be honest so if anyone can direct me to the relevant data that would be great or I will just have to mention the data in the 2004 annual summary.

 

[joel ewing]

Hi Peter,
Nebraska is my birthstate, and I've got longtime, deep family roots in that state, so over the years I really took an interest as to how it compared to the other states within the alley with respect to confirmed tornadoes.
I know that the magazine "Weatherwise" used to show a state-by-state map at the end of the year that showed the annual tornado counts. I never subscribed to it, and looked at it sparingly over the years at the University of Arizona science library, so I don't know if they still print that map anymore or not.
I too would be interested in learning if this information is "out there" somewhere.
Best of luck to you, sir!
Joel Ewing

 

[Jared Guyer]

Peter and Joel,

SPC's SeverePlot program allows you to view such data:
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/software/svrplot2/

SeverePlot's tornado data is given in terms of the entire tornado track, with individual county/state-crossing segments unified as appopriate. SeverePlot doesn't specifically have a state filter at this time, but the map domain can be adjusted and zoomed as needed, with the data filtered accordingly.

This doesn't help the segment aspect, but preliminary tornado report totals for each state are available here for 2005/2006:
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/online/monthly/index.html

Jared

 

[Paul Austin]

I know that the magazine "Weatherwise" used to show a state-by-state map at the end of the year that showed the annual tornado counts... I don't know if they still print that map anymore or not.

Joel, you're right, and they do still publish the annual state-by-state stats and maps in the March/April editions, I believe. But I don't know how the segmented paths are handled by WeatherWise. SPC would probably be a better source.

 

[Brian Stertz]

For 2006...the top 5 states with the most F3 or stronger tornadoes are:

1) Missouri 12
2) Illinois 5
3) Tennessee 5
4) Arkansas 3
5) Minnesota 3

Of Missouri's 12 strong to violent category tornadoes, 10 occurred in the period from March 11th (late evening) - March 13th (early am).

 

[Peter Kirk]

SPC's SeverePlot program allows you to view such data:
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/software/svrplot2/

SeverePlot's tornado data is given in terms of the entire tornado track, with individual county/state-crossing segments unified as appopriate. SeverePlot doesn't specifically have a state filter at this time, but the map domain can be adjusted and zoomed as needed, with the data filtered accordingly.

That is a nice programme, thanks. With thousands of TNs though in this period in some cases it would take rather a long time to count them all though on it.

 

[Justin Turcotte]

I've already done a similar study for my MS thesis and I need to get the thing done soon. I produced a bunch of plots by US county (called Parishes in LA) using # tornadoes per 2500 sq. km per year. I also produced tornado days plots using rate of recurrence. I also produced some graphs of tornado frequency versus population density. I havn't updated my site in a while but a lot of the data is available in the climo section of my site: http://snrs.unl.edu/amet898/turcotte/home.htm
I'm probably gonna take advantage of the drylinehosting special and move this site and register a different domain name that is easier to type.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Here's another publication with some city and county breakdowns I find quite interesting:

Broyles, J.C., and K.C. Crosbie, 2004: Evidence of Smaller Tornado Alleys Across the United States Based on a Long Track F3-F5 Tornado Climatology Study from 1880-2003. Preprints, 22nd Conf. Severe Local Storms, Hyannis MA.