Adam Jockle
Geo-Spatial Project
Introduction
One of the most amazing natural phenomena to occur on the earth are tornadoes. They are both beautiful and destructive. Storm chasing and research is done every year to learn more about these weather events. For my project, I will do a geographical analysis of 2018 and 2019 tornadoes, and some of the correlations that can be seen. I will look geographical trends that can be seen through the tornado location data. This will include terrain type and population density. My analysis will attempt to better understand how these geographic elements relate to where tornadoes form.
Hypothesis
One of the more intuitive predictions that I believe will be shown through this analysis is that tornadoes spawn in more rural areas, rather than in mountainous terrain. Even though there have been tornadoes in mountainous areas, it seems like a rarity, to which I want to test. The mountains seem to disrupt the air drafts and prevent any major tornadoes from forming. Additionally, I believe that there will be more tornadoes in areas with less population density, as there are less structures to interrupt the spawning of tornadoes. Tornado alley became infamous for the large and destructive tornadoes that have been seen over the last century. While the climatology is perfect over this region for these tornadoes, I believe that the lack of population density and hence buildings in strucutures may contribute to this effect.
library(sf)
library(leaflet)
library(mapview)
library(leafpop)
library(geojsonsf)
library(rmarkdown)The first analysis I will do will be the 2019 tornado season, the most recent set of data available through NOAA. This map shows the locations of all the tornadoes in 2019.
Tornado Location Map 2019
<script type='text/javascript'> There are many takeaways that can be made from this map, some of which will be highlighted later on in this project. The infamous “tornado alley” in the Midwest does have a very large amount of tornaodes partiucarly around Oklahoma. The Southern states including Mississippi and Alabama also have a high concentration of tornadoes. In general, there were a lot of tornadoes in the United States in 2019, but very few west of Denver and the Rockie Mountain Range.
The next map is similar, but looks at the density of tornadoes during 2019.
Tornado Density Map 2019
<script type='text/javascript'> One of the most notable standouts in addition to the findings in the previous map are the lack of tornadoes in Arkansas. When you zoom in, you can see that Arkansas contains large forests and more mountainous terrain as opposed to Oklahoma and Missouri. This is one possible explanation. Another interesting finding is the lack of tornadoes concentrated in the Appalachian Mountain Range. This supports the hypothesis that tornadoes ocur less frequently in mountainous terrain. The first two maps did a good job at showing the tornadoes as it relates to geographic terrain. However, I also wanted to look at this data as it relates to population density.
This next map shows the population density in the United States.
Population Density Map
<script type='text/javascript'> When you look at the last two maps, there are a few key takeaways. There does not seem to be a strong correlation between high population density and lack of tornadoes. The western states generally have the lowest population density and also the least amount of tornadoes. This is very likely more related to the terrain. The northeast has the highest population density and fewer tornadoes than the deep south, but this could just be a product of the strong amounts of heat and humidity that occur in the South. While this data provides a good analysis, it would be useful to look at another year of data. This map will show the tornadoes for 2018.
Tornado Location Map 2018
<script type='text/javascript'> The first thing that can be noticed is there are a lot fewer tornadoes in 2018 than 2019, particularly in Oklahoma.It seems as if 2019 had a very active tornado season. The south still featured a lot of tornadoes, while the western states had very few.
Tornado Density Map 2018
<script type='text/javascript'> The density map is somewhat similar to 2018 as there are very few tornadoes over Appalachia.There is strong evidence that the terrain has a major effect on tornado density. Two other areas that were hotspots in 2018 include Eastern Colorado and Iowa. The cold air flowing off the Rocky mountains contributes to this occurence.
Overall it seems like there is a decent amount of variance with the tornadoes, but the southern states seem to have the strongest concentration of tornadoes over the two years I analyzed.
Conclusion
The maps that were analyzed showed mixed findings in relation to my hypothesis. It does seem as if tornadoes generally occur over more flat areas, as to opposed to more mountainous terrain. Once you go west of Denver, there is a very low concentration of tornadoes. Obviously some of this is strongly related to climatology, but the rugged terrain definitely plays a prominent role. It doesn’t seem as if population density plays a large role in the location of tornadoes. If it did, it is probably only in large cities with tall skyscrapers and structures that could possibly disrupt them.Ultimately, a mix of optimal climatology conditions along with flat rural areas creates the recipe for a tornado.