Climatological Estimates of Hourly Tornado Probability for the United States

Abstract

Abstract While there has been an abundance of research dedicated to the seasonal climatology of severe weather, very little has been done to study hazardous weather probabilities on smaller scales. To this end, local hourly climatological estimates of tornadic event probabilities were developed using storm reports from NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center. These estimates begin the process of analyzing tornado frequencies on a subdaily scale. Characteristics of the local tornado climatology are investigated, including how the diurnal cycle varies in space and time. Hourly tornado probabilities are peaked for both the annual and diurnal cycles in the plains, whereas the southeast United States has a more variable pattern. Areas that have similar total tornado threats but differ in the distribution of that threat are highlighted. Additionally, areas that have most of the tornado threat concentrated in small time frames both annually and diurnally are compared to areas that have a low-level threat at all times. These differences create challenges related to staffing requirements and background understanding of the tornado threat unique to each region. This work is part of a larger effort to provide background information for probabilistic forecasts of hazardous weather that are meaningful over broad time and space scales, with a focus on scales broader than the typical time and space scales of the events of interest (including current products on the “watch” scale). A large challenge remains to continue describing probabilities as the time and space scales of the forecast become comparable to the scale of the event.