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.
- How severe is a tornado? Tornados are measured using the Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF Scale), which rates tornados based on estimated wind speeds based on the damage caused.
Tornadoes occur in many parts of the world, including Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. Even New Zealand reports about 20 tornadoes each year. Two of the highest concentrations of tornadoes outside the U.S. are Argentina and Bangladesh.
- impacts of tornado: Tornadoes can destroy buildings, flip cars, and create deadly flying debris. It is one of the highly destructive severe weather phenomena in the US. Between 1983 and 2024, severe storms, including tornadoes have caused over 500 billion dollars loss in the US, the second largest disaster in terms of loss[1].
- observed trends of tornado: Although the number of days with tornadoes has fallen, other trends are increasing, including outbreaks with 30 or more tornados in one day, the density of tornado clusters (i.e., tornadoes are closer geographically), and the strength of tornadoes. The distribution of tornadoes has also shifted eastward. These trends have not been directly linked to climate change.https://www.c2es.org/content/tornadoes-and-climate-change/
- future of tornado.
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[2] | 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;