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Tornado Time: A Dangerous Season

Mar 16, 2010 – 3:42 PM
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(March 16) -- After a winter that was unusually harsh in many parts of the country, most people are happy to bid the cold season goodbye. But spring brings its own perils, the most dangerous of which are tornadoes.

The year is off to a quiet start as far as tornadoes are concerned, but that may not last long. On March 8, a twister ripped through western Oklahoma, and storm chasers captured the drama on video. The chart below shows that tornado activity typically starts gaining steam in March and spikes as we get closer to summer.
Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The states that bear the brunt of the violent weather include Florida and those that lie in Tornado Alley, a broad swath of the southern Great Plains. No state is completely tornado-free. Even Alaska, which averaged zero tornadoes a year during the period covered by the map below, saw a rare tornado in 2005.

Source:National Climatic Data Center
Filed under: Nation, Science, The Grid
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