Alabama Now Deadliest State for Tornadoes

Some years ago while working at the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the National Weather Service (NWS) Birmingham office, I started keeping up with tornado deaths in the United States by state. The reason for assembling that information was twofold – first, I could not find any such statistics on the topic; and second, I got the question posed to me as to where Alabama stood in relation to other states.

So I set about gathering the information which was no small task going through the data from the Storm Prediction Center (SPC). The result was a graph I often show when doing severe weather safety presentations to underscore the importance of knowing what to do. When I got the data assembled, I was not surprised to see that Texas was the number one state for tornado deaths. Second and third went to Mississippi and Alabama – again, not really a surprise.

What probably was the most surprising fact was to see that over half of the top 15 states in tornado deaths were located in the Southeast US. We hear so much about “tornado alley,” a term I hate to hear, so you would expect many of the top 15 states to be in that area. But the data proved that was not true.

Unfortunately with the tornado events of last Wednesday, Alabama has leaped from number 3 to number 1, and by no slim margin. The top five states in tornado deaths are now ranked like this:

These number may change slightly as the official surveys are completed and the death toll is finalized. All of these numbers are the latest that I could find from the various NWS offices affected over the last month or so. They also represent data since 1950.

These are not the kind of numbers which promote living in Alabama, of course. But they do emphasize the importance of understanding the weather dangers we face and the need to be aware and prepared when severe weather threatens.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather