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Florida's Tornado Climatology: Occurrence Rates, Casualties, and Property Losses Emily Ryan

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Florida's Tornado Climatology: Occurrence Rates, Casualties, and Property Losses Emily Ryan Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2018 Florida's Tornado Climatology: Occurrence Rates, Casualties, and Property Losses Emily Ryan Follow this and additional works at the DigiNole: FSU's Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & PUBLIC POLICY FLORIDA'S TORNADO CLIMATOLOGY: OCCURRENCE RATES, CASUALTIES, AND PROPERTY LOSSES By EMILY RYAN A Thesis submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science 2018 Copyright c 2018 Emily Ryan. All Rights Reserved. Emily Ryan defended this thesis on April 6, 2018. The members of the supervisory committee were: James B. Elsner Professor Directing Thesis David C. Folch Committee Member Mark W. Horner Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables . v List of Figures . vi Abstract . viii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Definitions . 1 1.2 Where Tornadoes Occur . 3 1.3 Tornadoes in Florida . 4 1.4 Goals and Objectives . 6 1.5 Tornado Climatology as Geography . 6 1.6 Outline of the Thesis . 7 2 Data and Methods 9 2.1 Data . 9 2.1.1 Tornado Data . 9 2.1.2 Tropical Cyclone Tornado Data . 11 2.1.3 Property Value Data . 13 2.2 Statistical Methods . 15 2.3 Analysis Variables . 16 2.3.1 Occurrence Rates . 16 2.3.2 Casualties . 16 2.3.3 Property Exposures . 17 3 Time Variations in Occurrence 19 3.1 Yearly . 19 3.2 Monthly . 21 3.3 Daily . 27 3.4 Hourly . 29 4 Characteristics and Regional Variations 32 4.1 Tornado Characteristics . 32 4.1.1 Magnitude . 33 4.1.2 Path Length and Width . 37 4.2 Regional Variation . 39 4.2.1 Panhandle . 42 4.2.2 Peninsula . 44 4.2.3 Distance to Coast . 46 iii 5 Structural Property Losses 49 5.1 Property Value Analysis . 49 5.1.1 Structural Values . 49 5.1.2 Tornado Overlay and Exposure . 51 5.1.3 Case Study . 52 5.2 Modeling Property Loss . 56 5.2.1 Monte Carlo Simulation . 56 5.2.2 Actual Loss Estimates . 58 5.2.3 Probable Maximum Loss Estimates . 60 6 Major Findings, Conclusions, Limitations, and Future Work 62 6.1 List of Major Findings . 62 6.2 Conclusions and Limitations . 62 6.3 Future Work . 64 Bibliography . 66 Biographical Sketch . 71 iv LIST OF TABLES 1.1 Enhanced-Fujita Damage Scale. Source: Storm Prediction Center . 2 4.1 Tornado characteristics by F/EF rating . 37 4.2 Tornado characteristics as a function of distance to coast for the whole state of Florida 47 4.3 Tornado characteristics as a function of distance to coast for the Panhandle of Florida 47 v LIST OF FIGURES 2.1 Genesis location of Florida tornadoes from 1950-2016 by EF rating . 10 2.2 Genesis location of tornadoes in Florida associated with tropical cyclones from 1995- 2015 by EF rating . 12 2.3 One kilometer grid cells of property values in Florida (2014 USD) . 14 3.1 Yearly distribution of Florida tornadoes from 1987 to 2016 . 20 3.2 Yearly distribution of tornado casualties from 1987 to 2016 . 21 3.3 Monthly distribution of Florida tornadoes from 1987 to 2016 . 22 3.4 Monthly distribution of tropical cyclone tornadoes in Florida from 1995 to 2013 . 23 3.5 Monthly distribution of Florida tornado casualties from 1987 to 2016 . 25 3.6 Average monthly property exposure in Florida in 2014 dollars . 26 3.7 Daily tornado count distribution based on yearly and monthly trends in tornado oc- currence from 1950 through 2016 for Florida . 27 3.8 Number of days with at least one tornado on a logarithmic scale. 28 3.9 Hourly distribution of Florida tornadoes from 1987 to 2016 . 30 4.1 Monthly distribution of EF Rating to all tornadoes by percentage on a variable y-scale 34 4.2 Number of tornadoes that produced at least one casualty in Florida from 1987 through 2016.............................................. 35 4.3 Genesis location of casualty producing tornadoes by EF Rating in Florida . 36 4.4 Annual average path length of Florida tornadoes in kilometers . 38 4.5 Annual average path width of Florida tornadoes in meters . 39 4.6 Annual average path area of Florida tornadoes in kilometers . 40 4.7 Monthly distribution of Florida tornadoes by county from 1987 to 2016 . 41 4.8 Monthly Tornado Distribution between the Panhandle and Peninsula . 43 5.1 Residential and non-residential structural value distribution based on one kilometer grid cells in Florida . 50 vi 5.2 One-kilometer cell with the largest residential structural value . 51 5.3 One-kilometer cell with the largest non-residential structural value . 52 5.4 Tornado paths in Florida from 1950 through 2016 . 53 5.5 1956 F3 Pembroke Pines to Fort Lauderdale tornado . 54 5.6 Structural value cell with the greatest tornado occurrence . 54 5.7 April 4, 1966 Tampa tornado path . 55 5.8 Monte Carlo simulated tornado paths . 57 5.9 Loss versus exposure from 2007 through 2015 . 58 5.10 Average annual property loss from Florida tornadoes . 59 5.11 Annual exceedance probability of property loss from Florida tornadoes as modeled in the Monte Carlo simulation . 61 vii ABSTRACT Florida has a high frequency of tornadoes that occur throughout the United States. Together, Florida's large population and expensive property, provides a great risk for injuries, fatalities, and damage to structures for when a tornado occurs. This risk of death or damage continues to increase as the population expands. The goal of this research is to better understand the tornado hazard in Florida by creating a climatology of Florida tornadoes through examining occurrence rates, casualties, and property loss. The tornado reports are obtained from the Storm Prediction Center's Severe Weather database. Descriptive statistics are used to analyze temporal distributions, characteristics, and geographical distributions of tornadoes. Tropical cyclone tornado data from 1995 through 2013 is used for examining temporal distributions throughout the state. In addition, a new property value dataset put together by Georgianna Strode at the Florida Resources and Environmental Analysis Center is used to evaluate property loss from tornadoes throughout the state. Inferential statistics are used for testing hypotheses and modeling future tornado paths using a Monte Carlo simulation. Over the period from 1987 though 2016, there were 1,765 tornado reports in the state. The peak frequency occurs during the month of June with the overall tornado distribution mimicking the tropical cyclone distribution of the North Atlantic hurricane season. Majority of tornadoes occur in the peninsular region of the state, with tornadoes in the panhandle likely being stronger. There is a strong positive correlation between the amount of property exposed and the number of casualties produced by tornadoes. Although the majority of tornadoes that occur throughout Florida are very weak, the path length and width are shown to be increasing in recent years. Additionally, the annual average property loss estimate from tornadoes in Florida is $53 Million. Results of the Monte Carlo simulation indicate a 5% chance that the annual loss will exceed $203 million, a 1% chance that it will exceed $430 million, and a 0.1% chance that it will exceed $1 billion. viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In this chapter, I define and describe the salient features of tornadoes and tornado activity and their various classifications. In addition, I provide background details on tornadoes and where they occur throughout the world, the United States, and in Florida. I address the main goals and objectives behind this research. Lastly, I provide a brief outlined description of each chapter. 1.1 Definitions A tornado is a high speed, violently rotating vortex of wind, that can cause catastrophic damage to property and loss of life [57]. Most tornadoes develop as a result from thunderstorms, which develop when the atmosphere is unstable. Lower level warm air breaks through a stable layer and rises above a cooler and drier air mass. The rising air is warmer than its environment producing an upward acceleration of the air (updraft) due to buoyancy. The updraft results creates deep upward motion (convection) that feeds the thunderstorm. As the warmer air rises and these winds begin to twist the updraft, a rotating column of air is formed, known as the mesocyclone. As the rotating column of air aligns vertically, a tornado is formed [44]. In the United States, tornadoes are classified according to an estimated wind speed and rated based on the amount of damage they cause. The scale for rating tornadoes was originally a wind speed scale created by tornado researcher T. Theodore Fujita in 1971, called the Fujita (F) scale. There were six different rankings on which tornadoes were rated, ranging from F0 (weak) to F5 (violent) [31, 3]. The Fujita scale was later revised, and in 2007, the Enhanced Fujita scale (EF) was implemented. This new rating scale rates tornadoes based on the damage they cause, in contrast to their wind speed [53, 3]. It ranges from EF0 (weak) to EF5 (violent), similar to that of the previous scale. The EF scale is more accurate because wind measurements from tornadoes have been relatively rare, therefore looking at the amount of damage caused tends to be a more useful indicator [18]. Only about one-third of tornadoes are rated higher than an F/EF2 and just a small percent of them are considered violent with a rating of F/EF4 or greater (Table 1.1) 1 The wind speeds in tornadoes are estimated based on the observed damage [29].
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