re: 8 confirmed Tornadoes last Wednesday from Slidell to Kiln, Mississippi

quote:

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When I was a kid/ young adult, I don't ever recall a tornado in Louisiana. Maybe we just hear more about them now? It was always Kansas or Oklahoma etc... WTF happened.

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Let's look at the maps from recent decades.

The numbers at the top of each image are the total number of tornadoes for the entire country during the given timeframe. As far as I know, you can't do it by individual state.

1960-1970

1970-1980

1980-1990

1990-2000

2000-2010

2010-2020


An important note is that as radar has improved the number of confirmed tornadoes has generally gone up. The reason the first image you shared begins in 1989 is because that was the year that NEXRAD radar started coming online. By 1996 all major weather radars across the country would be upgraded to NEXRAD. There was a huge increase in confirmed tornadoes going forward because we were able to see a whole lot more on radar, giving us the ability to "find" more damage paths that could have gone unnoticed in the past.

Between 1950 and 1989, as a country, we crossed the 1,000 tornadoes a year mark only twice. Between 1990 and 2022 we topped 1,000 tornadoes a year 25 times, and never dipped below 886.

When I first started looking into it, I thought that the implementation of Dual-pol radar would have provided for the greatest jump in confirmed tornadoes, but that isn't really the case. The increase with NEXRAD was much greater.

All of that said, people should be careful when comparing modern tornado statistics to the historical record. We are just so much better now at finding and documenting every single tornado, and it isn't just due to better radar. Population growth and expansion is key, as is the growth of video technology. There are simply more people in more places and nearly all of them have some means of documenting any tornado that may drop from a storm.

So, when you see someone make a claim, especially one that touts climate change, that we are seeing way more tornadoes these days, remember that it isn't as simple as looking at the final tally at the end of a given year.