Abstract
Abstract. The standard measures of the intensity of a tornado in the USA and many other countries are the Fujita and Enhanced Fujita scales. These scales are based on the damage that a tornado causes. Another measure of the strength of a tornado is its path length of touchdown, L. In this study we consider severe tornadoes, which we define as L≥10 km, in the continental USA (USA Storm Prediction Center Severe Weather Database). We find that for the period 1982–2011, for individual severe tornadoes (L≥10 km): (i) There is a strong linear scaling between the number of severe tornadoes in a year and their total path length in that year. (ii) The cumulative frequency path length data suggests that, not taking into account any changing trends over time, we would expect in a given year (on average) one severe tornado with a path length L≥115 km and in a decade (on average) one severe tornado with a path length L≥215 km. (iii) The noncumulative frequency-length statistics of severe tornado touchdown path lengths, 20
Highlights
This paper introduces and tests hypotheses for quantifying the intensities of severe tornadoes and severe tornado outbreaks
In this paper we extend his approach, to further develop individual tornado and tornado outbreak path length statistics to aid in improving our understanding of tornado climatology
We show that the number of tornadoes in a convective day scales with the total length of tornadoes in that convective day, and consider the probability of a given outbreak total path length LD occurring
Summary
This paper introduces and tests hypotheses for quantifying the intensities of severe tornadoes and severe tornado outbreaks. For the 56 749 tornado records during this period, information includes (in most cases) tornado date, time, location (latitude, longitude, county, state), Fujita scale (or enhanced Fujita scale) intensity, injuries, fatalities, damage, and touchdown path length and width. Beginning in the early 1980s, a Warning Preparedness Meteorologist (WPM) was assigned to 52 Weather Service Forecast Offices; the WPM was responsible for tornado surveys in a specified region (McCarthy, 2003) This contrasts with the earlier period (1952–1981), during which tornado touchdown path lengths were primarily determined from newspaper accounts, which appear to have systematically over-stated the actual values (McCarthy, 2003). Other factors for a more systematic reporting of weak tornadoes over time (Brooks and Doswell, 2001)
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