Tracking the Confirmed Tornadoes of 2012 - TornadoesOf.com

[Sam Sagnella]

Tornadoes of 2012 - TornadoesOf.com

Good day, StormTrack-ers!

I wanted to pass along the link to a site that I've been building, which I hope can become a useful resource to those of us that are truly fascinated by tornadoes. It's a chronological listing - broken down by month - of all tornadoes in the United States that have been confirmed by an NWS Forecast Office. Each listing provides the basic information related to each confirmed tornado event (e.g. Enhanced Fujita rating, path length, path width, injuries, etc.) and is a link to the source Public Information Statement, Local Storm Report, NCDC page, etc. Complimenting the data for each tornado event is usually a photo or video clip related to that particular storm, with the first priority given to the capture of the tornado itself.

www.tornadoesof.com

So far, 2012 is completely up-to-date, with at least 81 confirmed tornadoes having occurred across 11 states as of today, February 16. The 2011 archives are currently functional as far back as July, but I should have the remainder of the year -- including the Super Outbreak -- done within the next few weeks.

Texas --> 23
Alabama -->13
Louisiana --> 10
Arkansas --> 8
Mississippi --> 7
Kentucky --> 6
Indiana --> 5
North Carolina --> 3
Tennessee --> 3
Georgia --> 2
Florida --> 1

Confirmed January tornadoes --> 75 (3-year average is 17)
Confirmed February tornadoes --> 6 (3-year average is 33)

Interestingly enough, 12 individual counties have been affected by more than one tornado during the first 47 days of 2012. Nearly all of these occurred on a same-day basis, with two exceptions: Brazoria County, Texas and Burleson County, Texas.

Brazoria County was affected by four E-F0 tornadoes during January; three occurred during the late morning hours of Monday, January 9th, and another hit Pearland just after noon on Wednesday the 25th.

The storm system that produced Brazoria County's most recent tornado, had earlier produced Burleson County's first tornado of 2012, an E-F1 near Deanville. Nine days later, the Burleson County community of Snook would be hit by two damaging tornadoes (E-F1 and E-F2) on February 3rd.

If you have any questions or comments related to the site, feel free to email me at [email protected] or PM me here on ST.

All the best,
Sam

 

[Shawn Gossman]

A very good idea for a website Sam Bookmarked it

 

[Jeff Duda]

Just FYI, Sam, NCDC's storm events database, which is free, contains exactly the information you are compiling. Granted, the data are slow to come in (about 6 months behind) since they require time to confirm the entries before releasing them. But I would suggest looking through that to get your information.

 

[Sam Sagnella]

Indeed the NCDC database does contain the same basic information (and it extends WAYYYYY farther back); it really is probably the single most useful event-specific tornado research tool out there. Furthermore, the official monthly NOAA Storm Data publications should always be regarded as containing the highest level of accuracy out of all of the information on the web - including my own.

In many cases my site does include a link to the respective NCDC page as the source for an event -- mainly if the local office doesn't issue any statement. The only real negative to it is the length of the lag time (which obviously is NOT a negative in the long run, as it simply takes time to confirm the veracity of each and every event). For the record, I do go back through Storm Data and both amend any incongruities with my numbers and utilize its much more specific path length information (hundredths of miles vs. miles). What the NCDC database, and in most cases Storm Data, do not include however are the photo and video captures (or news stories) related to the event, which in my mind add a 'humanizing' aspect to the hard numbers.

I guess that last bit was the real reason I've created the whole site -- to attempt to align and connect event-specific tornado statistics with event-specific tornado experiences (and the multitude of emotions they stir) on a large scale.

As always, I truly do appreciate all feedback.

All the Best,
Sam

 

[Patrick Marsh]

Although it is definitely the best publicly available dataset, NCDC Storm Event archive does have some pretty glaring mistakes in there. Anyone who is going to use it shouldn't use it blindly.

Along those same lines, the Storm Data publications also have some glaring mistakes ... such as the 9+" hail stones in placed like Arkansas and Ohio. When you compare those reports to those in the vicinity (~1-2") it suggests that for the 9+" stones the circumference and not the diameter was reported and published.

For having the best severe weather observational dataset in the world, it really is pretty poor from a research standpoint.

 

[Sam Sagnella]

Patrick is, of course, correct that there are some errors -- both omissions and some not-so-thoroughly-vetted entries -- scattered infrequently throughout Storm Data, and that it shouldn't be used blindly. Few things should be, really. It does stand as the official record though, and as far as tornadoes are concerned it's pretty darn good. However, one example of a potential omission is last August 8 in McLean County, IL. In this case, there exists rather convincing video evidence of a tornado touchdown near Hudson (shown on the August 2011 page), which is officially listed in Storm Data as a funnel cloud(NCDC) and thereby not included in the official US tally for 2011. Furthermore, but on the flipside, markedly weaker (IMO) video evidence was used as the basis for the entry of a tornado on Patuxent River NAS in MD on August 25th into the database. So indeed there are inconsistencies, but overall it's still - by far - the best we've got.