U.S. sees three quietest tornado years in a row since records began

Special to Climate Depot

Three quietest tornado years in a row in the record? 

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate/three_quietest_tornado_seasons_in_a_row_in_the_history1/

By Boris Konon, Meteorologist and Storm Chaser

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October average is 61 (69 preliminary) and November average is 58 (27 preliminary). Preliminary number for Dec so far is 27 and average is 24.
Although an isolated tornado or two this weekend along the Gulf coast is possible, that essentially appears to be it for theyear.  The 27 prelim count this month is about 10 less for a final count when you remove duplicate reports from 12/23.  Yearly avg is 1253.

I estimate the final count for 2014 will be ~835.  That is an extraordinary deviation from the mean.  67% of average, 6% lower than 2013 and 8% lower than 2012!  This is the lowest count since 1988 when 702 tornadoes occurred (1988 had a big CONUS drought as in heat and lack of rainfall and that keep the tornado count down).  1989 was second with 856.

Here is a graphic that shows “detrended” tornado counts over the years. This helps to account for the better detection and documentation over time.  Not perfect, but better than just the raw numbers.  Look at 2014…about two standard deviations below average!

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Look at the last 15 years…I see more well below average than well above.  Another way of looking at it, there are more wild swings in the past 15
years.  True, but the door swings both ways and unlike say precipitation (too wet or too dry) the lack of tornadoes is a good extreme regardless of how you look at it.  So with tornadoes, the more wild swing hypothesis due to climate change cancels things out more or less in the long run.  Yes, there will be big years and devastating outbreaks, but that is part of normal climatic variation.  As we have seen, for some reason the very occurrence even a single tornado is somehow “unusual” and makes national headlines routinely, even if it hits nothing or does minor damage with no harm to anyone.

Highlighting such an event only belongs on local news stations near the actual event and TWC/WxNation as a story, and perhaps briefly mentioned in the actual wxcasts on national news at times.

Another item, this is the third year in a row where U.S. tornado fatalities have decreased.  It is not just regression to the mean either due to the …

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