Spatial and Temporal Characteristics of Tornado Path Direction*

Suckling, Philip W.; Ashley, Walker S.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9272.2006.00509.x

Cited by 22 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Based on prior assessments, the S2 path comprises plausible ''worst case'' dimensions and magnitude attributes since it is constructed from contemporary violent tornado footprints and damage spatial characteristics from the worst segment of the Joplin EF5 path. The scenario paths were oriented from west-southwest to east-northeast, which is the dominant tornado direction mode found in a prior climatology (Suckling and Ashley 2006). Four of the five scenarios experienced greater than double-digit percentage increases in population and housing units from 1990 to 2010 (Table 9).…”

Section: ) Full-dimension Synthetic Scenariosmentioning

confidence: 78%

Spatiotemporal Changes in Tornado Hazard Exposure: The Case of the Expanding Bull’s-Eye Effect in Chicago, Illinois

Ashley

Strader

Rosencrants

et al. 2014

Weather, Climate, and Society

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Exposure has amplified rapidly over the past half century and is one of the primary drivers of increases in disaster frequency and consequences. Previous research on exposure change detection has proven limited since the geographic units of aggregation for decennial censuses, the sole measure of accurate historical population and housing counts, vary from one census to the next. To address this shortcoming, this research produces a set of gridded population and housing data for the Chicago, Illinois, region to evaluate the concept of the “expanding bull’s-eye effect.” This effect argues that “targets”—people and their built environments—of geophysical hazards are enlarging as populations grow and spread. A collection of observationally derived synthetic violent tornadoes are transposed across fine-geographic-scale population and housing unit grids at different time stamps to appraise the concept. Results reveal that intensifying and expanding development is placing more people and their possessions in the potential path of tornadoes, increasing the likelihood of tornado disasters. The research demonstrates how different development morphologies lead to varying exposure rates that contribute to the unevenness of potential weather-related disasters across the landscape. In addition, the investigation appraises the viability of using a gridded framework for assessing changes in census-derived exposure data. The creation of uniformly sized grid data on a scale smaller than counties, municipalities, and conventional census geographic units addresses two of the most critical problems assessing historical changes in disaster frequencies and magnitudes—highly variable spatial units of exposure data and the mismatch between spatial scales of population/housing data and hazards.

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Section: ) Full-dimension Synthetic Scenariosmentioning

confidence: 78%

Spatiotemporal Changes in Tornado Hazard Exposure: The Case of the Expanding Bull’s-Eye Effect in Chicago, Illinois

Ashley

Strader

Rosencrants

et al. 2014

Weather, Climate, and Society

Self Cite

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show abstract

“…When identifying improvement opportunities for future warning dissemination and risk communication, some researchers have underscored the importance of coupling advances in technology with an understanding of human sociology and psychology vis-à-vis tornado events (Ashley, 2007;League et al, 2010). To illustrate, efforts to Physical Geography adopt fine-grained data to reduce uncertainty (League et al, 2010) or a new model to give forecasters credit for close calls to increase warning credibility should parallel efforts to educate the public about tornado path directions or the dangers of using highway overpasses as shelter (Schmidlin et al, 2009;Sherman-Morris, 2010;Suckling & Ashley, 2006).…”

Section: Tornadoesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Climate extremes in the United States: recent research by physical geographers

et al. 2014

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This paper reports our review of research on domestic climate extremes conducted by US physical geographers over the past 15 years. Sections cover extremes in wind, precipitation, lightning, and temperature, as well as derivative climate extremes (droughts, floods, and storm surges). Themes considered include: the spatial and temporal distribution of the climate extreme; its implications for our understanding of the physical processes that produce it; the spatial and temporal distributions of the extreme's economic and human costs; lessons for assessment, policy, and management; and scale. We conclude that most of the works reviewed inadequately address the human basis of vulnerability to climate extremes, and encourage physical geographers to work with colleagues from the other subfields of geography and the social sciences to develop the holistic understanding of vulnerability needed to effectively adapt to the more extreme climate projected under climate change.

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“…This is likely due to the tendency of the Weibull distribution to over‐ or underestimate the tail ends of the distribution (Brooks, ). The mean modelled direction for all tornadoes over the study area was 74.9° (roughly westsouthwest to eastnortheast), which matches the findings of Suckling and Ashley () for the South Central region.…”

Section: Model Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A tornado daily impacts simulator for the central and southern United States

Hatzis

Koch

Brooks

2020

Meteorological Applications

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In an average year (1979–2016), the United States experiences nearly 1,100 tornadoes, which cause a total of 68 fatalities. Annual fatality rates have decreased since the peak in the 1920s, but there is a concern that they could start to rise again with increases in vulnerable populations and the impacts of climate change. It is possible to assess the risk of tornado fatalities using the historical record. However, the rarity of tornadoes and the short period of record may not capture the true risk. One way around this problem is to simulate thousands of years’ worth of tornadoes to obtain a broader picture of risk. Previous tornado risk models have distributed tornadoes randomly or used climatology to generate realistic tornado patterns on an annual (or longer) time scale. From an operational standpoint, it would be useful to have a model that distributes tornadoes on a daily time step to enable the forecasting of potential tornado impacts on a given day. The present study introduces one such model that distributes tornadoes using information about the favourability of the atmospheric environment for tornado development: The Tornado Daily Impacts Simulator (TorDIS). The paper demonstrates model utility through 1,000 year simulations over several metropolitan areas and with a comparison between modelled and observed impacts for several high‐impact tornado days. Forecasting potential tornado impacts on a daily time step could allow emergency managers to plan ahead for high‐risk days to prioritize their resources and save lives.

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Spatial and Temporal Characteristics of Tornado Path Direction*

Cited by 22 publications

References 31 publications

Spatiotemporal Changes in Tornado Hazard Exposure: The Case of the Expanding Bull’s-Eye Effect in Chicago, Illinois

Spatiotemporal Changes in Tornado Hazard Exposure: The Case of the Expanding Bull’s-Eye Effect in Chicago, Illinois

Climate extremes in the United States: recent research by physical geographers

A tornado daily impacts simulator for the central and southern United States

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