2005: Strange Tornado Year (Discovery News)

[Scott A. Kampas]

Mmmkay.

Feb. 1, 2006 — 2005 was a weird year for tornadoes, said meteorologists. It's not that there were more of them; there were 233, which is well below the 10-year average of 274. But 26 of these hit California, almost seven times the state's average.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060..._pla_print.html (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060130/tornado_pla_print.html)

[Scott Olson]

"As for tornado fatalities for the 2005, there were somewhere between 1,100 and 1,200, which is significantly fewer than in 2004, with 1,819, and 2003's 1,376, according to storm researcher Ken Dewey of the High Plains Regional Climate Center."

That's a fatality for every tornado, boy im glad thats not true!

[Glen Romine]

It sounds like he was just a hack reporter 'on assignment' at the annual AMS meeting. Boy did he ever goof up the facts. I'm guessing he just left off the '1' on the tornado counts, and then mixed up the tornado counts with the fatalities later. I'm not sure on the number of CA tornadoes last year - I suppose it is possible he got one fact right (by accident I'm sure). The editor there must be just as clueless..... how sad.

Glen

[Jeff Snyder]

There were only 233 tornadoes in 2005 in the US? I agree that he must have meant 1233 (which is pretty close to the 1233 prelim reports per the SPC page). Regardless, that's a pretty error-filled article coming from a semi-reputable media source.

[Kevin Myatt]

I've been in journalism for 17 years. This article is horrible, but sadly, I've seen similarly bad work related to weather from semi-reputable sources before.

[Kevin Myatt]

Originally posted by Scott Olson
"As for tornado fatalities for the 2005, there were somewhere between 1,100 and 1,200, which is significantly fewer than in 2004, with 1,819, and 2003's 1,376, according to storm researcher Ken Dewey of the High Plains Regional Climate Center."

That's a fatality for every tornado, boy im glad thats not true!

Actually, if you take his 233 tornadoes with 1,100-1,200 fatalities, it's more like 5 deaths per tornado.

[Dick McGowan]

Time to chase California I guess. They get about 10 percent of the tornadoes in the US of A.

[Andy Wehrle]

In August there were 62 tornadoes in Wisconsin, obliterating the previous record there of 44.

Most of those tornadoes came in other months...27 on August 18 and I don't think there were any others that month...maybe 1 or 2. :roll:

[Dave Gallaher]

When did the Discovery Channel get promoted to semi-reputable?

Dave Gallaher
Huntsville, AL

[Jeff Snyder]

Originally posted by Dave Gallaher
When did the Discovery Channel get promoted to semi-reputable?

Dave Gallaher
Huntsville, AL

I think many people regard Discovery, TLC, A&E, etc, higher than other sources, myself included. Maybe it's changed like the Weather Channel, moving from accurate presentation to things less desired (e.g. fence fixing, spending what seems like 90% of the broadcast time on the northeast 10-15% of the country, etc). Perhaps I mis-spoke and should have said "a source that I consider to be semi-reputable", which seems like a better assessment than a blanket "semi-reputable" label.

[Tim Gonyo]

The numbers underline some basic truths about tornadoes, said Dewey: They are much harder to predict than large, long-lived events like hurricanes and they choose their victims randomly.

Well, we all know who wrote this.... :lol:

[Robert Dewey]

Yeah, I think the reporter is the one messing up numbers... No one in the Dewey clan could ever do such a thing :lol:

[Dave Gallaher]

quoting Jeff Snyder: I think many people regard Discovery, TLC, A&E, etc, higher than other sources, myself included.

The Discovery Channel family of "documentary" outlets long ago mastered the art of taking worthily fascinating subject matter and filtering it through the lowest common denominators ( fear, sexuality, etc) of viewer intake. Mixed with this are occasional propagandist "historical" episodes, such as those used to create images of dangerous weaponry in Iraq during the promotional buildup to the war.

TDC was begun by a fellow who graduated from the University of Alabama in Huntsville; I had great hope for it for a while.

I don't intend to demean anyone's viewing choices---rather to express the number of disappointments the TDC group has provided.

Dave Gallaher
Huntsville, AL

[Jeff Snyder]

Just as an update... I emailed the website to notify them of the incorrect numbers. I just got an email back from the author, stating that he has made corrections where he could. I'm not sure what numbers Schaefer gave at the conference (I missed that talk), but I can't imagine he said 1300 fatalities and 233 tornadoes last year. LOL.

EDIT: I see he DID correct that fatality count, but he's staying with the 233 tornadoes in 2005... He mentioned that that's the number that was given in the talk, as well as the number given in his absract... I've looked through my Preprints CD and can't find it on though, unfortunately.

[Andy Wehrle]

Wow...if there were 233 tornadoes and 62 in Wisconsin, that's 26% of the national total. :shock: :D :lol: :roll:

[Glen Romine]

You can send it to him from here:

http://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techp...aper_108012.htm (http://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_108012.htm)

What he seems to be missing is that the tornado count is for the first 4 months of the year - not the total for the entire year.

There does appear to be typos though in the above abstract, such as the average tornado count for May.

Glen