You may have noticed the most-prone counties covered so far are predominantly near or in large metro areas, such as Denver, Houston, Oklahoma City, Tampa/St. Tornado Segment Density (per 100 square miles) Top 10 Counties/Parishes With the Highest Tornado Segment Density, Per 100 Square Miles 1950-2016(Data: NOAA/NCEI 2010 U.S. Six of the top 10 counties were in the Sooner State.ĭespite only 39 segments, Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, made this top 10 list given it's the third small parish in the state. Three notorious Oklahoma counties, including the Oklahoma City and Tulsa metro areas, shot up in the list when tornado segments were normalized by county area. Pinellas County, Florida's second smallest county, racked up 130 tornado segments, for a density of roughly 46 segments per 100 square miles, in the 67-year period. Galveston County, Texas, was a solid second place. However, there was one county that rocketed to the top of the list, head and shoulders above all others. The 10 counties with the most tornado segments (as defined above) per 100 square miles from 1950-2016. Shop the Patio Seating Sale at Wayfair (SPONSORED) It only makes sense that a larger county would tend to have more tornado segments. These raw tornado segment statistics may not tell the whole story. Top 10 Counties With Most Tornado Segments 1950-2016(Data: NOAA/NCEI) County McLean County, Illinois (103 segments) and Sherman County, Kansas (100 segments) were the other triple-digit segment counties. Of 35 total counties with at least 100 tornado segments, 15 were in Oklahoma, eight in Florida, six in Texas and four in Colorado. Landfalling tropical storms and hurricanes also typically spawn tornadoes, likely also contributing to the higher totals in some of the counties near the coast. Near the Gulf Coast, tornadoes can strike any time of year, and even on summer days when an outbreak of severe weather isn't expected, benign thunderstorms along the sea-breeze front can spawn brief tornadoes. Five Florida counties each cracked the top 10 list. It was no surprise to have a pair of Sooner State counties – Caddo and Oklahoma – make the list, but neither cracked the top five. Runner-up was Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston, with 225 tornado segments. The 10 counties with the most tornado segments (as defined above) from 1950-2016. Other than Colorado, the other top tornado counties were either in Oklahoma or near the Gulf Coast. ( MORE: Tornadoes Influenced By Mountainous Terrain?) A north-south area of converging air known as the Denver Convergence Vorticity Zone, frequently forms east of the Interstate 25 corridor from southern Weld County to east of downtown Denver, serving as a source of spin which thunderstorms can then tilt and stretch to form tornadoes. Thunderstorms are often an almost daily occurrence from late spring into summer along the Front Range of Colorado. Another Colorado Front Range county, Adams County, ranked third with 173 tornado segments. Weld County, Colorado, just north of the Denver metro area, has tallied 262 tornado segments, an average of roughly 4 segments each year, from 1950-2016. If simply considering the raw number of tornado segments over that 67-year period, regardless of a county's size or population, you may be surprised to learn the number-one county is in Colorado. For example, a tornado tracking over three counties has three tornado segments, one per county, in the database. Since a given tornado may travel over multiple counties, the dataset isn't strictly the number of tornadoes, but rather number of tornado segments. Using the Storm Events database from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, we compiled tornado data for each county in the U.S. You can probably guess the nation's most tornado-ravaged states, but a NOAA dataset allows us to zero in on the most tornado-prone counties in the U.S.
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