02 November 2016

Tornado distribution in the United States


It's quite remarkable how few watches occur in New England and the country west of the Great Plains.

Data from NOAA/NWS via Paul Douglas' outstanding weather blog.

Reposted from 2010 to add this image:


Source.

8 comments:

  1. Has tornado alley moved to the south east?

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  2. Sort of (see the comments at the source link).

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    1. Hi, apparently the intervening 6 years have erased those comments you mention. Do you remember the explanation? Being a resident of the Gulf Coast, I assume it's mostly due to the tornadoes that spin off of hurricanes?

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    2. No - I just checked. They're still there. At the source link (scroll down to the map). But they don't say why it has happened.

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  3. Yeah, we may have tornadoes down here in Tampa, but they are F0s - "Oh, look, a couple of trees were knocked over. We might have had a tornado!" Whereas up in Kansas, Oklahoma, etc, they get those monster F5s that are 1/2 mile wide and destroy towns.

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  4. Great post. Makes me smile at my undergrad degree in Atmospheric Science.

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  5. I don't find it so remarkable that there are so few tornado watches in the northeast. I'm from Central New York and I only remember one reported tornado since I've been alive. That was probably around 1997.

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  6. What's also incredible is that around 75% of the tornadoes in the world occur in the US.

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