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Tornadoes kill 80 Americans per year.
Hurricanes kill 17 Americans per year.
About the only way you can die in a hurricane is if you ignore days, and days, and days of warnings to evacuate. Hurricane deaths should almost be an automatic Darwin Award. Hurricanes are not even close to being as dangerous as tornadoes.
You're assuming that everyone has the resources to get out of the way. Unfortunately hurricane deaths are disproportionately biased towards the poor.
Many of the places in the path of Hurricanes are small, often poor, island nations. In many cases those people have literally nowhere to run. It's quite common that a hurricane has already taken over 100 lives before it even reaches the US coast.
Imminent threats such as tornadoes and tsunamis are inherently more dangerous than predictable threats such as Hurricanes, they leave you very little time to get out of harm's way.
Hurricanes, while generally more destructive and impactful than tornadoes, can be more easily avoided. The evacuation of Houston before Hurricane Rita (while disastrous) prevented what could've easily been another Katrina situation had Rita plowed into the city. Now if a tornado like the El Reno, OK EF5 took aim at Houston, there'd be nowhere to run.
Sandy popped up on the models about 2 weeks in advance, granted it was a highly unlikely scenario, but it ultimately happened.
Imminent threats such as tornadoes and tsunamis are inherently more dangerous than predictable threats such as Hurricanes, they leave you very little time to get out of harm's way.
Hurricanes, while generally more destructive and impactful than tornadoes, can be easily avoided for the most part. Sandy popped up on the models about 2 weeks in advance, granted it was a highly unlikely scenario, but it ultimately happened.
With a lead time of at least a week and a half. The death toll could've been 10,000+ had Sandy struck with little/no warning like a tornado.
The Joplin, Missouri EF5 tornado killed 158 people (68% of Sandy) while causing 2.4 Billion USD (4% of Sandy) in damage over the course of an hour and a half (0.5% of Sandy).
With a lead time of at least a week and a half. The death toll could've been 10,000+ had Sandy struck with little/no warning like a tornado.
The Joplin, Missouri EF5 tornado killed 158 people (68% of Sandy) while causing 2.4 Billion USD (4% of Sandy) in damage over the course of an hour and a half (0.5% of Sandy).
Without a warning it did less damage than Sandy, and here we're comparing a Tornado ranked among the top 10 deadliest of all time against a Hurricane that probably doesn't even make the top 50.
I think tornadoes are far more dangerous for their size than Hurricanes. F5 tornadoes tend to have similar death tolls to large hurricanes yet and are usually a couple of miles wide while hurricanes encompass hundreds of miles. Thing is, a lot of the area of hurricanes is relatively benign while tornadoes are more like concentrated danger. Also, note I said "for their size".
Of course, a lot of posts on here are too American centric. People in third world countries, especially very poor people, likely don't have internet connection or TVs therefore not as much warning as we would here in the States.
I've lived through both (fortunately), with ~4 days to prepare or evacuate for a hurricane, and no idea a tornado was imminent until I heard it ~1/8 mile away with no time to do anything but pull my blanket over my head. Sorry, but I remain unconvinced that a hurricane is more dangerous, at least in a first world country with a NWS and multimedia to provide advance warning.
I have lived different areas with either a Tornado or Hurricane possibility. With Hurricanes you do have more time to prepare mentally for the possibility. But with Tornadoes the whole thing is over much faster. As far as property destruction I think its more likely to have something bad happen if you live in a hurricane zone that's why the premiums are so high for homeowners insurance near the gulf.
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