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Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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Interesting... this graph shows the number of tornadoes occurring in the US increasing dramatically
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/nebraska/US-tornadoes-1950-2006.jpg (broken link)
That graph is totally amazing. I had no idea we were having an increase like that. At first I thought it may be because back in 1950 there may not have been the organization that we have now. You know~sparse areas of the country not even reporting tornadoes. But it's clear that even compared to recent years there has been quite an increase.
Censusdata,thanks for the stats. I hate tornadoes, & when I move I plan on moving to a place that gets the fewest tornadoes per year. I know people think it's stupid, but I've been through a few already & it's something I never want to experience again.
That graph is totally amazing. I had no idea we were having an increase like that. At first I thought it may be because back in 1950 there may not have been the organization that we have now. You know~sparse areas of the country not even reporting tornadoes. But it's clear that even compared to recent years there has been quite an increase.
Jammie...
One thing I did notice is that the time that the number of tornadoes started to increase was 1991 and 1992...and that by chance coincided with the moderanization of the weather service and the installation of 110 doppler radars throughout the United States and also through the 90s the mobile doppler radars used by universities (mainly at OU in Norman) started to hit the road in the plains for tornado reasearch. So from about 1991 to 1995 there was a whole new network of radars installed all with abilities to detect storm motion. Thus we were able to see tornadoes much more and thus more warnings. Often time even though we may not hear about a weak tornado in open country the day of the event we will call around a day or two later trying to verify what we saw on radar the previous day. In the past we did not have the easy capability to go back and do this with radar images and also could not identify tornadoes as easily just on radar alone.
Voila....at least in our area....we are now discovering many more weak or F0 tornadoes that prior to 1991 would have never been detected by radar nor never been followed up on. So I do think the overall trend upward is based on this. Of course...just like any weather pattern...certain years are just more favorable for tornadoes than others. Look at 2006 as compared to 2004. 2006 was a very dry year in the Plains.
Dan
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Praying for the victims and families there.
