Severe winds and tornadoes
Overview
- what is tornado: A tornado is a narrow, violently rotating column of air that extends from a thunderstorm to the ground.
Data:
Historical Tornado data
| Dataset | Description | Data Access |
|---|---|---|
| Severe weather events archive by NOAA | Organized severe thunderstorms archived by Storm Prediction Center of NOAA. The weather events covered include tornadoes, hail, and strong winds. The archive provides information on observation time, location (with detailed latitude and longitude), and estimated wind speed. | Access |
| Severe weather database by NOAA | Data for tornadoes, hail, and damaging wind, as compiled from NWS Storm Data. Tornado reports exist back to 1950 while hail and damaging wind events date from 1955. Information is provided on observation time, location, storm magnitude, as well as mortality, injuries, and estimated losses for property and crops. Please read the format specification for more information. | Access (Note: The CSV data files are located further down the webpage.) |
| Severe weather data inventory (SWDI) by NCEI of NOAA[1] | An integrated database of U.S. severe weather records that provides access to data from a variety of sources in the NCEI archive. SWDI includes multiple search and access methods for records that cover particular time periods and geographic regions. Data are currently available in Shapefile (for GIS), KMZ (for Google Earth), CSV (comma-separated), and XML formats. Note that no additional quality control measures are taken beyond the processing that takes place during data archival. | Access |
The Storm Prediction Center of NOAA contains a lot of useful resources, including climatology and statistics of tornadoes: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data
European Severe Weather Database https://eswd.eu/
Global Disaster Database (EM-DAT)
wind speed averages: https://disgeoportal.egs.anl.gov/portal/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=a69fcf899d91410799233f104b025552; https://climrr.anl.gov/mapexplorer;