The US is home to “tornado alley”, an ominous name. Technically it refers to Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas but in reality it includes pretty much the whole area east of the Rockies except New England. As you can see in the following map of annual tornadoes per state from the US Storm Prediction Center:
Texas gets 118 twisters per year, followed by Kansas with 82 and Oklahoma with 71. But you’ll be in for lots of tornadoes each year even in places as far away as Florida, Alabama, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota. And if you are wondering whether this year’s tornado activity is higher or lower than average, click the link and we’ll show you how to #LookItUp.
At the SPC website you just have to scroll down past the maps and you’ll get to the following daily chart:
The red line is the cumulative number of tornado reports so far this year and the black line is the average cumulative count averaged over 2005 to 2015. Not that those 11 years are necessarily the “normal” number, it’s just the comparison they offer. And whatever their reasons, so far this year there have been 1,190 tornadoes reported, whereas the average over 2005-2015 as of today was 937, making it a very active tornado scene so far. But averages being what they are, some years are low and some are high. As we reported in our IPCC Unspun series there is no long term trend in the annual number of US tornadoes.
Just as a demonstration on how misleading statistics can be, in your selected chart TX is the worst tornado state, but on the same page you get the data from you can see the average number of tornados per 10,000 sq mi, and TX is has only 4, one of the lowest. MS and AL are by far the worst, 4 times the number of tornadoes by area than TX. The by area measure is much better at understanding the risk to life and property.
If you take out the big uptick in March, the graph is very “average”. The hand of “clickbait enthusiasts” has been at work.