Friday, June 1, 2012

Tornado Tracks by F-Scale, a Small Multiple

There was an unexpected and fun response to the tornado tracks map taking the uxblog's readership from an audience of 14 to at least double that!  Anyways, I've been asked by a few folks to separate out the storms by F-Scale.  So here is a not-very-small small multiple of how that would look.  56 years of tornadoes all at once, chunked out by severity...


Related poster print version available here.

15 comments:

  1. Interesting -- great job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. its not up to date tho. I don't see the dot for Joplin. Just sayin.. wonder when this came out.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Legend, top right 1956-2006. Just sayin... Map legends, gotta love em.

      Delete
  3. Which tornado was that incredibly long F5 in Mississippi and Alabama?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was the tornado on April 27, 2011. It killed hundreds, including dozens in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the largest city that took a direct hit.

      Delete
    2. It was actually a tornado on March 3, 1966. This map doesn't have the ones from April 27, 2011...

      Delete
    3. I live in Tuscaloosa. And it wasn't dozens, it was close to 150. Horrible day.

      Delete
  4. It looks like the Joplin tornado is marked on the map as an F4 when it was an F5. Makes me wonder what else is wrong on the maps.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The data goes up to 2006, so the Joplin tornado is not included in this dataset. An enhanced version which is interactive is in the works; this will include up-to-date data with enhanced F-scale measures (EF). Will keep you posted on the progress.

      Delete
  5. That F4 Joplin track was probably the 1971 tornado. If this is 2006 data, then there's a lot left out... good concept, but the date range covered should be a part of the graphic (and actually the tracks should include up to the May, 2011 data). Most people are interested in this kind of thing because of what happened in April and May of 2011.

    ReplyDelete
  6. These are great maps. It would be interesting to further segregate by year - or by decade.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Really Interesting way of presenting information. Could you tell me what tool you used for the purpose of visualization?

    ReplyDelete
  8. May 3rd Moore Oklahoma is there... Would like to see this updated with the May 20th monster added. Along with the May 31st outbreak we just had....

    ReplyDelete
  9. What was the source of the data for this visualization? Was it NOAA's historical maps?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. NOAA tornado archives. Find the source link and background here: http://uxblog.idvsolutions.com/2012/05/tornado-tracks.html

      Delete