Examining Tornado Data

Objectives:

Procedure:

  1. Access Tornadoes: Nature's Most Violent Storms to read about how tornadoes form and tornado safety.
  2. Access The Weather Channel's Online Glossary to define the following weather terms:

    tornado

    Fujita-Pearson Scale

    waterspout

    Tornado Watch

    Doppler radar

    satellites

    cyclone

    Tornado Alley

    updraft

    downdraft

    downburst

    funnel cloud

    troposphere

    wind shear

    twister

    vortex

    Tornado Warning

    low pressure

  3. Access Monthly Tornado Data and enter the number of tornadoes, by month, for the last three years into a ClarisWorks spreadsheet and make a graph.
  4. Next, for each year, prepare another spreadsheet (Remember you can copy and paste the columns from your first spreadsheet) and graph showing the number of tornadoes and the number of deaths caused by tornadoes each month.
  5. The Historical Tornado Data Archive may also be useful for obtaining other tornado-related data.

Analysis:

  1. Based on your first graph, during which months were tornadoes most frequent? Is this the same for all three years of data?
  2. Using the information in your next graphs, during which months do the most deadly tornadoes occur? Is this the same for all three years of data? Compare the number of tornadoes for each month to the number of deaths due to tornadoes.
  3. What conclusions can you draw from this data?
  4. Look at a map to see the Location of Tornado Deaths for 1998. In which geographic locations do most deaths from tornadoes occur?

Assessment

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