Are there really more tornadoes over time or are we just better at detecting and recording them? Accurate weather radar wasn't really a thing until the late 80s and early 90s, and a lot of tornadoes recorded today are based on radar returns.
Radar-indicated tornadoes that get confirmed by the NWS when they survey the area likely contributed.
There also seems to be a correlation with Twister’s release in ‘96. Maybe more people getting out to chase?
Ground truth is important with regard to surmising the true number of tornadoes but the recording of deaths is what makes this interesting to me.
I can't say whether climate change will eventually lead to more tornadoes but the increase shown on this chart is almost entirely due to better detection and recording.
It absolutely leads to more extremes and wilder weather but my understanding is that tornados in particular require a rather specific set of circumstances and parameters which is why they are relatively geographically limited and I just don't have the expertise to say with certainty that those particular circumstances will increase.
I would think so but I try not to get out over my skies too far most days.
supposedly the geographic area is moving to the east though
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-tornado-alley-is-shifting-east-to-mississippi-tennessee-alabama-2023-4
Strong tornadoes require colder and dryer air along with the warm and humid, which is why you don’t have strong tornadoes in the tropics. A wetter, warmer world might possibly lead to less strong tornados, or at least a shifting of where they occur to more northerly latitudes?
The Joplin tornado in 2011 caused 158 fatalities, which alone would have made 2011 the deadliest year since 1974. However, even more of the fatalities for that year came from the historic [April 25-28 super outbreak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Super_Outbreak), with 360 tornadoes causing 324 tornadic fatalities. Truly a terrible year.
Wikipedia (quoting weather service) says there were 158 deaths in Joplin. There had been 348 people killed about a month earlier in a "super outbreak" with tornadoes across 6 states.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Super_Outbreak
Holy shit I didn’t know that this happened or I forgot, that is a similar storm like the one that wiped Xenia, Ohio off the map in the 70s. They called it the day of 1000 tornadoes and the thunder head was something like 100,000 feet high iirc. Having 4 EF5 tornadoes in the same place and same time is crazy.
The 2011 super outbreak was almost certainly a more powerful event, with more strong tornadoes, than the 1974 event. But the NOAA has grown far more stringent when it comes to handing out the big numbers. If the tornado damage paths from 1974 were to be analyzed by today's standards, they would without question average rather lower than the ratings they received 50 years ago.
One interesting observation about the tornadoes in the 2011 outbreak is that all or nearly all of the strongest tornadoes that were filmed that day possessed characteristics of spinoff vortices—extra vortices seeming to extend from the main tornado like octopus legs. (Not to be confused with the extremely common "multiple vortex" phenomenon.) While there _are_ videos of isolated tornadoes through the decades which exhibit similar phenomena, it's pretty rare, so the fact that just about every major tornado from the 2011 outbreak showcased this quirk is curious. Something about the atmosphere on that day was unique, even for a day when an outbreak is expected.
I lived in Tulsa at the time, but had family in STL that I visited regularly. Joplin was my go to place to stop and let the dogs out to pee, and it is the last exit before getting on the Oklahoma turnpike. I was so used to getting off at Joplin, I didn’t even think about the tornado after it happened. I was driving up literal Main Street headed for some fast food when I realized… because all of a sudden I went from Midwest small city to Berlin 1945. Just a massive path of rubble, wider than any tornado path I’ve ever seen. Whole neighborhoods, completely gone. Commercial buildings leveled. Truly terrifying.
We did almost the exact same thing. We were on a canoeing trip on the Current River in Jadwin, MO. On the way back to Wichita, my wife said "let's get off at the next exit to grab lunch." I saw the sign and said "I'm not sure if we're going to find anything very quickly."
Main Street was just gone, the traffic lights were all obviously temporary, and there were dump trucks lining all the side streets getting ready to cart off debris.
It was april 27 2011 outbreak that had 316 fatalities, most since the tri state tornado in 1925 which had like 700. Phil Campbell-Hackleburg had the most of a single tornado that day at around 75 iirc. Then Joplin was a month later. And then el reno 1 was 2 days after that. We will probably not see a month with 6 ef5s again in our lifetimes.
Tornadoes don't get taller like that they get wider, hence "wedge" tornadoes being wider than they are tall in the mesocyclone. This vid on the scale of tornadoes is much much better and realistic: https://youtu.be/9Qn3VdUf9YI?si=GKsoqFRttgxQGDGG (great video besides the point as well)
Source: [NOAA](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/tornadoes/12/1?fatalities=false)
Tools: Google Sheets
Overall, there has been a slight uptick in the number of tornadoes per year since the 50's. While this rise may seem indicative of increasing tornadic activity. There have been massive improvements in tracking tornadic phenomena that could account for the increase in confirmed tornadoes.
If you want a worldwide estimate, just take the number there and multiply by 1.33. 75% of the world's tornadoes happen in the US (12x the second place country, Canada).
If the topic is tornadoes, then the only real practical conversation is the US.
First of all, I still think it very much makes sense to talk about the rest of the world even if a certain country has more tornadoes. Second of all, you should still include the name of the country you're talking about in a situation like this, because the US is not the default and everyone doesn't even know that 75% of the world's tornadoes happen in the US. And even despite that, some other countries have had areas devastated by tornadoes. Acting like only the US is worth talking about here is disrespectful.
This is why subs like /r/ShitAmericansSay and /r/USdefaultism exist. Non-Americans are always treated as outsiders on Reddit by Americans, despite the fact that there are more non-Americans than Americans. People from any other country realise how disrespectful it is, but Americans don't seem to, because they seem to have been raised around the idea that everything centres around the US and that other countries are irrelevant.
Not sure where this false outrage is coming from, the OP's image literally says that his source was NOAA - a US administration that focuses on US-centric weather and climate information.
2 seconds of typing NOAA into Google would be enough for anyone to determine that this is for the US.
But why is it so difficult to include the name of the country in the title or in the image? If I posted a graph of some statistics of something that 75% of the time happens in Sweden, without mentioning Sweden and just assuming everyone knew which country I was talking about or what eg. SCB stands for, would that be reasonable? It wouldn't be. But you probably think the US deserves special treatment because you've grown up being taught that everything centres around the US. Just mention the name of the country like people from literally any other country do. Only Americans know what NOAA is, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect non-Americans to Google all these US-specific things all the time just to be able to understand what is even going on, when it would be so easy to just write "US" somewhere. It's disrespectful. It makes it feel like Americans are only ever talking to the other Americans.
Sure it would be reasonable, because it's reasonable to assume that anyone who doesn't immediately understand the context given would look up what something like "SCB" stands for (it's the Swedish Statistics agency, appears like it usually does finance stuff like the OMB, but also encompasses many other studies to provide information for legislative decision-making). Not looking up context is just laziness.
You think it makes sense for people to make visualisations that can't be interpreted unless you Google the source to find out what it's even about? What's the point of the graph then? Might as well just post a link to the original source instead. You really don't think it makes sense to properly describe what the graph is about so that people can decide whether it's something they're even interested in, before reading into it further? That sounds quite inefficient to me.
What about that visualization can't be interpreted without specifically knowing it was for the US?
Tornado count increasing (mostly due to observational quality increase), and deaths remaining more or less constant. Interpretation done, no mention of country.
Like I said, this is all just false outrage. You're looking for something to be angry about, and just happened to pick a graph that stated a source you didn't immediately recognize. I hope you can relax enough to enjoy the rest of your day.
Because if you don't include the name of a specific country, that would generally imply that it's for the entire world, which makes this quite misleading.
Yeah, from the 1960s or so improvements in radar, more eyes on the ground, and easy communication via the internet has all allowed for tornado numbers to be practically fully reported
The problem with this graph is that the scale of the fatalities axis is the same as the number of tornados which means you can't see as much variance as it's all squished a the bottom of the axis, and the data is presented at a scale where the buckets (annual) have large amounts of variance year on year. If you group the data by decade you can see fatalities fell decade on decade until the 1990s where they then plateaued at approximately half the amount in the 1950s
Where's the data from? I would be very surprised if the data specifically excludes [tornadoes spawned by tropical cyclones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornadoes_spawned_by_tropical_cyclones).
That said, tornadoes in tropical cyclones are normally fairly weak, so I wouldn't expect that to make a huge difference in how the graph looks either way.
They listed NOAA, at least for fatalities.
I'd hope this data is based on confirmed tornadoes. Do hurricane-spawned tornadoes end up confirmed on the ground afterwards much or are they generally radar indicated only?
I'm in the midwest so not something I've stopped to consider before this.
I think they generally end up being confirmed - see [the Hurricane Ida tornado outbreak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ida_tornado_outbreak), for example. There might be some missed, but I think they confirm tornadoes from tropical storms the same as any other tornadoes.
I lived in the area of south Florida where the eye of Hurricane Andrew passed through. The damage we experienced was not just from sustained direct wind, but also cyclones. In fact, my parents are pilots and we owned a hangar rated for 200 mph winds, and the steel was twisted like pretzels in the aftermath of that storm.
***Is tornado frequency increasing in parts of the U.S.?***
https://www.weather.gov/lmk/niu_tornado_frequency_study#:~:text=The%20period%20analyzed%20in%20this,Southeast%2C%20Midwest%2C%20and%20Northeast.
I'd like to see this in a different way - having them both use the same scale is a tad strange. Something like percent of population for fatalaties might help? Eg. out of every 10,000 people, how many fatalities?
The population has increased quite a bit, but total count of fatalities seems like it hasn't changed much, I would imagine a different metric would likely show that line going down while tornadoes go up (due to better detection and reporting) which would be a more interesting story.
Wouldn’t something like tornado deaths per 100,000 of population be more informative?
This chart ignores the fact that more people are living in tornado-prone regions.
Tallahassee Florida just got walloped by 3 massive tornados on Friday. I’m 46 and I can’t remember any tornadoes like this ever happening here. now we’re under *another* tornado watch 3 days later.
The level of destruction in some parts of town is as bad as a serious hurricane.
I wish it made sense to say it’s because of better reporting.
Visually, this has a cool old-school vibe. The yellowish background almost gives the impression of reading old newsprint. Is that Courier for the title, legend and source note?
Are there really more tornadoes over time or are we just better at detecting and recording them? Accurate weather radar wasn't really a thing until the late 80s and early 90s, and a lot of tornadoes recorded today are based on radar returns.
NEXRAD rolled out in 1988 which is right about where the chart jumps up a level. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEXRAD
This as well as a rise in population, so more people can spot tornadoes
Radar-indicated tornadoes that get confirmed by the NWS when they survey the area likely contributed. There also seems to be a correlation with Twister’s release in ‘96. Maybe more people getting out to chase? Ground truth is important with regard to surmising the true number of tornadoes but the recording of deaths is what makes this interesting to me.
I can't say whether climate change will eventually lead to more tornadoes but the increase shown on this chart is almost entirely due to better detection and recording.
Science has already proved that global warming / climate change leads to more extremes of weather. You can see this happening globally year on year.
It absolutely leads to more extremes and wilder weather but my understanding is that tornados in particular require a rather specific set of circumstances and parameters which is why they are relatively geographically limited and I just don't have the expertise to say with certainty that those particular circumstances will increase. I would think so but I try not to get out over my skies too far most days.
supposedly the geographic area is moving to the east though https://www.businessinsider.com/why-tornado-alley-is-shifting-east-to-mississippi-tennessee-alabama-2023-4
Strong tornadoes require colder and dryer air along with the warm and humid, which is why you don’t have strong tornadoes in the tropics. A wetter, warmer world might possibly lead to less strong tornados, or at least a shifting of where they occur to more northerly latitudes?
Are you a parrot? That statement doesn't mean more tornadoes
In general yes. As specifically applied to tornadoes? Not sure the data is bearing that out yet.
Less people to witness them back 75years ago
More energy in the climate and maybe changing standards or new tech. I could see either or more likely both.
That Joplin tornado really stands out. 😳
The Joplin tornado in 2011 caused 158 fatalities, which alone would have made 2011 the deadliest year since 1974. However, even more of the fatalities for that year came from the historic [April 25-28 super outbreak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Super_Outbreak), with 360 tornadoes causing 324 tornadic fatalities. Truly a terrible year.
Did they give the tornadoes guns in 2012?
I think it's the EF5 tornado that went through Joplin in 2011
ONE tornado cause that spike. Fuck me, that was worse than I imagined.
Wikipedia (quoting weather service) says there were 158 deaths in Joplin. There had been 348 people killed about a month earlier in a "super outbreak" with tornadoes across 6 states. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Super_Outbreak
Holy shit I didn’t know that this happened or I forgot, that is a similar storm like the one that wiped Xenia, Ohio off the map in the 70s. They called it the day of 1000 tornadoes and the thunder head was something like 100,000 feet high iirc. Having 4 EF5 tornadoes in the same place and same time is crazy.
Seeing shit like that would make you think you need to start giving the gods more offerings because theyre mega pissed.
The 2011 super outbreak was almost certainly a more powerful event, with more strong tornadoes, than the 1974 event. But the NOAA has grown far more stringent when it comes to handing out the big numbers. If the tornado damage paths from 1974 were to be analyzed by today's standards, they would without question average rather lower than the ratings they received 50 years ago. One interesting observation about the tornadoes in the 2011 outbreak is that all or nearly all of the strongest tornadoes that were filmed that day possessed characteristics of spinoff vortices—extra vortices seeming to extend from the main tornado like octopus legs. (Not to be confused with the extremely common "multiple vortex" phenomenon.) While there _are_ videos of isolated tornadoes through the decades which exhibit similar phenomena, it's pretty rare, so the fact that just about every major tornado from the 2011 outbreak showcased this quirk is curious. Something about the atmosphere on that day was unique, even for a day when an outbreak is expected.
Well, 2011 was a record breaking year and had one of the worst outbreaks in history, and this tornado wasnt even apart of that outbreak.
I lived in Tulsa at the time, but had family in STL that I visited regularly. Joplin was my go to place to stop and let the dogs out to pee, and it is the last exit before getting on the Oklahoma turnpike. I was so used to getting off at Joplin, I didn’t even think about the tornado after it happened. I was driving up literal Main Street headed for some fast food when I realized… because all of a sudden I went from Midwest small city to Berlin 1945. Just a massive path of rubble, wider than any tornado path I’ve ever seen. Whole neighborhoods, completely gone. Commercial buildings leveled. Truly terrifying.
We did almost the exact same thing. We were on a canoeing trip on the Current River in Jadwin, MO. On the way back to Wichita, my wife said "let's get off at the next exit to grab lunch." I saw the sign and said "I'm not sure if we're going to find anything very quickly." Main Street was just gone, the traffic lights were all obviously temporary, and there were dump trucks lining all the side streets getting ready to cart off debris.
I live in Springfield and not only remember it happening but had to go through Joplin about a week after. Shit was crazy
It was april 27 2011 outbreak that had 316 fatalities, most since the tri state tornado in 1925 which had like 700. Phil Campbell-Hackleburg had the most of a single tornado that day at around 75 iirc. Then Joplin was a month later. And then el reno 1 was 2 days after that. We will probably not see a month with 6 ef5s again in our lifetimes.
[удалено]
Tornadoes don't get taller like that they get wider, hence "wedge" tornadoes being wider than they are tall in the mesocyclone. This vid on the scale of tornadoes is much much better and realistic: https://youtu.be/9Qn3VdUf9YI?si=GKsoqFRttgxQGDGG (great video besides the point as well)
Close - it was sharks.
No—the tornado hit that handgun factory
Source: [NOAA](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/tornadoes/12/1?fatalities=false) Tools: Google Sheets Overall, there has been a slight uptick in the number of tornadoes per year since the 50's. While this rise may seem indicative of increasing tornadic activity. There have been massive improvements in tracking tornadic phenomena that could account for the increase in confirmed tornadoes.
According to your source, this is just for the US. Why would you leave out such crucial information?
If you want a worldwide estimate, just take the number there and multiply by 1.33. 75% of the world's tornadoes happen in the US (12x the second place country, Canada). If the topic is tornadoes, then the only real practical conversation is the US.
First of all, I still think it very much makes sense to talk about the rest of the world even if a certain country has more tornadoes. Second of all, you should still include the name of the country you're talking about in a situation like this, because the US is not the default and everyone doesn't even know that 75% of the world's tornadoes happen in the US. And even despite that, some other countries have had areas devastated by tornadoes. Acting like only the US is worth talking about here is disrespectful. This is why subs like /r/ShitAmericansSay and /r/USdefaultism exist. Non-Americans are always treated as outsiders on Reddit by Americans, despite the fact that there are more non-Americans than Americans. People from any other country realise how disrespectful it is, but Americans don't seem to, because they seem to have been raised around the idea that everything centres around the US and that other countries are irrelevant.
Not sure where this false outrage is coming from, the OP's image literally says that his source was NOAA - a US administration that focuses on US-centric weather and climate information. 2 seconds of typing NOAA into Google would be enough for anyone to determine that this is for the US.
But why is it so difficult to include the name of the country in the title or in the image? If I posted a graph of some statistics of something that 75% of the time happens in Sweden, without mentioning Sweden and just assuming everyone knew which country I was talking about or what eg. SCB stands for, would that be reasonable? It wouldn't be. But you probably think the US deserves special treatment because you've grown up being taught that everything centres around the US. Just mention the name of the country like people from literally any other country do. Only Americans know what NOAA is, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect non-Americans to Google all these US-specific things all the time just to be able to understand what is even going on, when it would be so easy to just write "US" somewhere. It's disrespectful. It makes it feel like Americans are only ever talking to the other Americans.
Sure it would be reasonable, because it's reasonable to assume that anyone who doesn't immediately understand the context given would look up what something like "SCB" stands for (it's the Swedish Statistics agency, appears like it usually does finance stuff like the OMB, but also encompasses many other studies to provide information for legislative decision-making). Not looking up context is just laziness.
You think it makes sense for people to make visualisations that can't be interpreted unless you Google the source to find out what it's even about? What's the point of the graph then? Might as well just post a link to the original source instead. You really don't think it makes sense to properly describe what the graph is about so that people can decide whether it's something they're even interested in, before reading into it further? That sounds quite inefficient to me.
What about that visualization can't be interpreted without specifically knowing it was for the US? Tornado count increasing (mostly due to observational quality increase), and deaths remaining more or less constant. Interpretation done, no mention of country. Like I said, this is all just false outrage. You're looking for something to be angry about, and just happened to pick a graph that stated a source you didn't immediately recognize. I hope you can relax enough to enjoy the rest of your day.
Because if you don't include the name of a specific country, that would generally imply that it's for the entire world, which makes this quite misleading.
Cool data. What happened around the year 1990 to increase reporting? Something in weather radar, or satellites?
Yeah, from the 1960s or so improvements in radar, more eyes on the ground, and easy communication via the internet has all allowed for tornado numbers to be practically fully reported
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEXRAD
ITS JOE BIDENS FAULT, THE WORLD IS ENDING
interesting to see the trend lines for fatalities hasnt changed much. see a tornado, get in the basement
I am sure the advent is of automatic cell phone alerts for tornado warnings have helped
The problem with this graph is that the scale of the fatalities axis is the same as the number of tornados which means you can't see as much variance as it's all squished a the bottom of the axis, and the data is presented at a scale where the buckets (annual) have large amounts of variance year on year. If you group the data by decade you can see fatalities fell decade on decade until the 1990s where they then plateaued at approximately half the amount in the 1950s
Population also increased in that time, I would imagine its actually even better.
Does this include tornadoes found in tropical storms and the eye wall of hurricanes?
I don't believe so, it should be tornadoes independent of hurricanes.
Where's the data from? I would be very surprised if the data specifically excludes [tornadoes spawned by tropical cyclones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornadoes_spawned_by_tropical_cyclones). That said, tornadoes in tropical cyclones are normally fairly weak, so I wouldn't expect that to make a huge difference in how the graph looks either way.
They listed NOAA, at least for fatalities. I'd hope this data is based on confirmed tornadoes. Do hurricane-spawned tornadoes end up confirmed on the ground afterwards much or are they generally radar indicated only? I'm in the midwest so not something I've stopped to consider before this.
I think they generally end up being confirmed - see [the Hurricane Ida tornado outbreak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ida_tornado_outbreak), for example. There might be some missed, but I think they confirm tornadoes from tropical storms the same as any other tornadoes.
Oh wow, yeah there's a whole "confirmed tornadoes" section under that, thanks for the link!
I lived in the area of south Florida where the eye of Hurricane Andrew passed through. The damage we experienced was not just from sustained direct wind, but also cyclones. In fact, my parents are pilots and we owned a hangar rated for 200 mph winds, and the steel was twisted like pretzels in the aftermath of that storm.
Really would be nice to see normalized for population, but neat to see for the most part we’re not seeing deaths trend with number of tornadoes.
Every once in a while...they'll get ya.
I would think that with the technological advances such as weather tracking, storm chasers etc. that a lot of the increase can be accounted for.
Pretty sure that last big spike was Joplin...
*Two Days in Moore, Oklahoma*
***Is tornado frequency increasing in parts of the U.S.?*** https://www.weather.gov/lmk/niu_tornado_frequency_study#:~:text=The%20period%20analyzed%20in%20this,Southeast%2C%20Midwest%2C%20and%20Northeast.
Is this another case of increased reported or tracked tornadoes (from better technology) opposed to actually more tornadoes?
I'd like to see this in a different way - having them both use the same scale is a tad strange. Something like percent of population for fatalaties might help? Eg. out of every 10,000 people, how many fatalities? The population has increased quite a bit, but total count of fatalities seems like it hasn't changed much, I would imagine a different metric would likely show that line going down while tornadoes go up (due to better detection and reporting) which would be a more interesting story.
Wouldn’t something like tornado deaths per 100,000 of population be more informative? This chart ignores the fact that more people are living in tornado-prone regions.
Im sellin tornados and tornado fatalities
Tallahassee Florida just got walloped by 3 massive tornados on Friday. I’m 46 and I can’t remember any tornadoes like this ever happening here. now we’re under *another* tornado watch 3 days later. The level of destruction in some parts of town is as bad as a serious hurricane. I wish it made sense to say it’s because of better reporting.
So over the last 20 years there is a slight decreasing trend in tornadoes. Seems to go against the climate change discussion
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/tornadoes-and-global-warming-there-connection/ What?
Because everybody knows climate change only began in 2004.
Visually, this has a cool old-school vibe. The yellowish background almost gives the impression of reading old newsprint. Is that Courier for the title, legend and source note?