rnadoes are one of Mother Nature's most feared, and fascinating, phenomena. They can strike anywhere, anytime, and with devastating and deadly force.
For years, scientists have been studying tornadoes to try to learn how and why they form, and also how we can improve our public warning systems.
Tornado Expert Dr. Greg Forbes tracks and monitors tornadoes year-round for The Weather Channel and weather.com. Dr. Forbes is a foremost expert in his field, studying under Tetsuya Fujita, who developed the F-rating scale by which we classify tornadoes.
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Dr. Forbes has developed a list this year of the Top Tornado Cities. This list shows the cities where homes are most likely to get hit by a tornado.
(More: Tornado Central)
"The difference between this year's list and the ones in the past is the past ones were just counting the sheer number of tornadoes. That didn't take into consideration the track length or path width. Thus it didn't count how big of an area was being affected by the tornadoes."
Dr. Forbes gathered data from the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center between 1962-2011. He added up the areas of the tornado paths within 75 miles of the city highlighted, including the tornado damage path widths and lengths. This methodology gives a more realistic probability of a particular location getting hit by a tornado than simply by using the raw numbers of tornado that have occurred within a metro area.
"In this case cities that are mostly in the Midwest, the Plains, and the South have the highest probability of a house getting hit by a tornado."
Read through the list to see if your city is on the Top 10 Tornado Cities list.
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