U.S. F-Scale Tornado Trends

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Tornado F-Scale Trends

The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) has a tornado mapping program called Severe Plot.

The data archive with this program extends from 1950 through 2018.
I do not know when the data after 2018 will be added to Severe Plot by the SPC.

Remember that the original F-Scale system was replaced with the EF-Scale.  The two scales are equivalent, for example an older F-2 tornado, is considered to be the equivalent of the newer EF-2 scale tornado for intensity and damage. I will refer to all tornadoes in the archive as F-Scale tornadoes.

Using this data archive, I put the U.S. data into five-year totals working backward from 2018.

The frequencies of each F-Scale F-0 thru F-5 was totaled (see the table just below here) and graphed (found below the table) to determine if there were any trends in the frequencies of different F-Scale intensities of tornadoes in the U.S.

Table: U.S. Tornadoes by F-Scales in 5-year totals

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