General Resources

National Storm Prediction Center. This site provides statistics on tornadoes and other severe storms including, monthly totals and averages, and killer tornado statistics for the US Its historical online archive contains data on tornadoes, hail and convective winds. Statistics are given by state from the 1940's to 1995 for injuries, fatalities and costs, overall rankings and more. Most files in the archive must be downloaded and unzipped. (For data after 1995 see the NCDC Web site, described later.)

Tornado and Storm Research Organisation. TORRO, a private British research organization, has compiled lists of all-time weather extremes for Britain for smog, precipitation, wind, floods and more as well as annual synopses of severe weather events in Europe and the UK.

USA Today Weather Page. This site features means, extremes, weather records, and recent weather highlights for locations around the world. It includes information and statistics on weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, water spouts, and severe storms. Excellent explanations of weather phenomena are also provided.

National Climatic Data Center for detailed reports of extreme US weather events.

Societal Aspects of Weather site which contains economic and casualty data for various weather phenomena. Also at this site is the Extreme Weather Sourcebook which documents the economic cost of extreme weather events.

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Hurricanes and Tropical Storms

Hurricane/Tropical Data. The Unisys Weather Processor provides storm track charts and text-based tables (including position in latitude and longitude, maximum sustained winds in knots, and central pressure in millibars) for storms in the Atlantic (from 1851), the Eastern (from 1949), Western (from 1945) and South (from 2000) Pacific, and the North (from 1945) and South (from 1949) Indian. There is a composite chart for each season as well as for each individual storm. The site also provides extensive links to satellite and radar imagery.

National Hurricane Center. This site provides current and historic tropical cyclone, hurricane, and high seas data along with high wind/wave alerts and ocean weather for mariners and aviators.

Hurricanes, Typhoons and Tropical Cyclones FAQ. This site provides lists of the costliest, deadliest, longest and the most intense events as well as other records and data about tropical storms.

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Droughts and Floods

National Drought Mitigation Center. This site contains links to current US drought forecasts and advisories. Other data includes moisture and vegetation indices, water supply conditions and global drought headlines. The "Drought Climatology" section has over 100 years of US drought data mapped and graphed.

Dartmouth Flood Observatory. The "Flood Archive" has a worldwide index map, report summaries and a table that displays the start and end date, number of deaths, damage estimates and amount of land impacted for flood events from 1994 to present. The site also provides numerous satellite images of flood events.

The World's Largest Floods, Past and Present: Their Causes and Magnitude. This is a U.S. Geological Survey Circular written by Jim E. O'Connor and John E. Costa.

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Tornadoes and Severe Storms

The Tornado Project Online. This commercial site links to descriptions of current (and some historic) tornado events in the US 'Top ten' lists of tornadoes by number of deaths, size, etc. are provided. It also contains an explanation of the Fujita tornado intensity scale.

 

Tornadoes. This NOAA web site describes historic tornado occurrences in the US.

Stormtrack. This site is usually one of the first to post eyewitness accounts of severe weather events occurring in the US It is also a good source for images of tornadoes and severe storms.

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Lightning and Wildfires

National Lightning Safety Institute. NLSI is a nonprofit research organization whose site contains lightning safety information, statistics on losses and damage caused by lightning, and quick lightning facts.

Human Voltage - What happens when people and lightning converge. This NASA-sponsored page contains statistics on incidents of people being struck by lightning. It also describes typical injuries caused by lightning plus links to many other lightning incident stories.

GEOMAC. Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination Group provides current wildland fire maps and information about ongoing wildfires.

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