I am Tom Freeland, a lawyer in Oxford, Mississippi. The picture in the header is my law office. I'm on Twitter as NMissC

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50 years of tornado activity, mapped

This map tracks tornado action for the last fifty years from NOAA data, with the intensity of the track showing how powerful the tornado was.

Here’s a closeup look at Mississippi, which at a glance seems as busy as anywhere, no surprise.  The easiest border to spot in all the action is with Alabama– find Mobile bay, and there just tot he left is a line going all the way up.  The Tennessee border is at the very top of this clip.

h/t Bill Greg, map maven, on Facebook.

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May 29, 2012, 10:42 am | Tags: , | Category: Random Firings | 8 comments

8 comments to 50 years of tornado activity, mapped

  • Delta Fred
    May 29, 2012 at 7:43 pm

    Is there a link to the original map?

  • NMissC
    May 29, 2012 at 8:48 pm

    Yes. Click on the national map and it takes you there.

  • WantedToBeALawyer
    May 29, 2012 at 9:03 pm

    Very cool map. Nice find, NMC.

    BTW, Delta State won today (click on a game for more stats).

    And, for those who are interested here is the NCAA Division I Baseball bracket (click into a regional, then click into a game, then hover over the bar graph to get stat rankings).

    The NCAA made a very nice website for this year’s baseball tournaments. What do the softball tournaments look like? Apparently, every bit as nice.

  • DeltaLawMama
    May 30, 2012 at 6:49 am

    It’s clear that the blawg lives in Dixie Alley (Little Tornado Alley.)

  • Ben
    May 30, 2012 at 6:53 pm

    Q. Is there a link to the original map?
    A. Yes. Click on the national map and it takes you there.

    Not for me. Any suggestions as to how I might capture the map?

    I’m hoping I might be able to find the underlying data disclosing the date for each track. There’s a lotta American history in that chart. I want to learn more.

  • WantedToBeALawyer
    May 31, 2012 at 3:21 am

    Ben, try this link to get to the original blog post:

    http://uxblog.idvsolutions.com/2012/05/tornado-tracks.html.

    The author talks about using data.gov to find it. I eventually found the zipped file at: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/gis/svrgis/ (second map on the page). The zip file contains an ESRI shapefile, so to view it you would need either ArcView or ArcReader from ESRI.com (free but registration required).

  • Ben
    May 31, 2012 at 7:51 am

    Thank you, WTBAL. I shall proceed accordingly.

  • Observer
    May 31, 2012 at 3:00 pm

    NMC, this is one of your “cooler” posts. An observation I have made is this:

    When I was young, we would visit my uncle near Blue Springs. He had a storm house dug into a hillside next to his house. Most old country houses had storm shelters. But you never saw many storm shelters built for houses that were constructed in the 1950s, ’60s, etc. Recently, however, there has been a spake of storm shelter installations.

    My thought was that tornadoes were much more common, or at least much more feared, in the earlier part of the 20th century than after World War II, which would explain the cessation in the construction of storm houses after WWII.