Adjustments in Tornado Counts, F-Scale Intensity, and Path Width for Assessing Significant Tornado Destruction

• Published in: Journal of applied meteorology and climatology Vol. 53; no. 6; pp. 1494 - 1505
• Main Authors: Agee, Ernest, Childs, Samuel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston American Meteorological Society 01.06.2014
• Subjects: Adjustment; Archives & records; Climate science; Climatology; Counting; Damage assessment; Destruction; Doppler radar; Doppler sonar; Energy; Fujita scale; Kinetic energy; Mathematical analysis; Meteorology; Meteors; Population growth; Radar; Statistical median; Storm damage; Storms; Tornadoes; Tornados; Trends; Weather forecasting; Width; Wind speed; Wind velocity; United States > US
• DOI: 10.1175/JAMC-D-13-0235.1
• ISSN: 1558-8424

The U.S. tornado record is subject to inhomogeneities that are due to inconsistent practices in counting tornadoes, assessing their damage, and measuring pathlength and path width. Efforts to improve the modern tornado record (1950–2012) have focused on the following: 1) the rationale for removing the years 1950–52, 2) identification of inconsistencies in F0, F1, and F2 counts based on implementation of the Fujita scale (F scale) and Doppler radar, 3) overestimation of backward-extrapolated F-scale intensity, and 4) a change in path-width reporting from mean width (1953–94) to maximum width (1995–2012). Unique adjustments to these inconsistencies are made by analyzing trends in tornado counts, comparing with previous studies, and making an upward adjustment of tornadoes classified by mean width to coincide with those classified by maximum width. Such refinements offer a more homogeneous tornado record and provide the opportunity to better evaluate climatological trends in significant (F/EF2–F/EF5) tornado activity. The median EF-scale (enhanced Fujita scale) wind speedsV medhave been adopted for all significant tornadoes from 1953 to 2012, including an adjustment for overestimated intensities from 1953 to 1973. These values are used to calculate annual mean kinetic energy, which shows no apparent trend. The annual mean maximum path width PW ¯ max from 1953 to 2012 (adjusted upward from 1953 to 1994 to obtain a common lower threshold), however, displays an increasing trend. Also, the EF-scale median wind speeds are highly correlated with PW ¯ max . The quantity (V med× PWmax)² is proposed as a tornado destruction index, and, when calculated as an annual cumulative value, the three largest years are 2007, 2008, and 2011.