One of our local news station meteorologists mentioned that both Dallas and Tarrant counties made the top ten list of number of tornado reports in Texas since 1950, #7 and #9 respectively. Considering that both counties lie in the well known zone of the United States called Tornado Alley, it is surprising that five out of the top ten counties are situated along the Texas gulf coast.
Being that I'm from the Gulf Coast, I find this quite interesting. At first I thought it could be the number of tornadoes that a land-falling hurricane/tropical storm produces as it comes ashore, but the high number of gulf coast tornadoes could just come from the amount of storms produced in a given time period. Think about it, East Texas, namely the southeast corner of the state is the wettest part of the start. But consider the amount of tornadoes happening this year all across the country, I've noticed a spike in reported tornadoes in the Corpus Christi area as well.
The Insurance Council of Texas conducted a survey of tornado reports provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This survey confirmed that Harris County, Houston's home county, led all of Texas' counties with 210, almost doubling the second highest count.
Top 10 Texas counties with reported tornadoes from 1950-2007
County----------Location-------Major City-----------#
1. Harris............Gulf Coast.............Houston...............212
2. Hale..............Panhandle ...........Plainview..............116
3. Galveston.....Gulf Coast............Galveston................108
4. Jefferson.......Gulf Coast............Beaumont...............99
5. Nueces .........Gulf Coast.........Corpus Christi............93
6. Lubbock.......Panhandle............Lubbock.................83
7. Dallas..........North Texas...........Dallas....................82
8. Lamb............Panhandle...........Littlefield................82
9. Tarrant........North Texas.........Ft. Worth.................80
10. Johnson.....North Texas..........Cleburne..................79
Click here for an interactive map from ICT.
Sources: http://www.insurancecouncil.org/news/2008/6192008x.pdf
http://web2.airmail.net/danb1/tornado.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment