r/MapPorn • u/mariedab84 • 7h ago
[OC] Tornado season moves north every year. All 73,378 US tornadoes since 1950 stacked onto one calendar year
Data is the NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950 to 2025, lower 48 only. Each dot is where a tornado touched down. I dropped every year onto the same Jan to Dec calendar (Feb 29 counts as Mar 1), so each date shows 76 years of tornadoes at once.
The white dot is the average position of every tornado within a week either side of that date. Around Christmas it sits in central Mississippi, by late July it's up in northern Missouri. That's about 530 miles.
Few things I didn't expect:
- May 24 is the busiest date of the year, 702 tornadoes over the 76 years
- April, May and June are 54% of all tornadoes
- in Dec to Feb about 4 in 5 hit south of the Kentucky/Tennessee line
- in July half of them are north of 41°N. In January it's 2%
Disclaimer: I also run a free map site with live quakes, volcanoes and hurricanes if you like this kind of thing: https://www.liveatlas.earth/north-america/united-states-of-america/




