Does anyone live in tornado alley?

[gwynne]

Just as an FYI from the National Centers for Environmental Information: Note: Tornado Alley has no agreed upon boundaries. The boundaries of Tornado Alley are debatable (depending on which criteria you use—frequency, intensity, or events per unit area).

As I've grown up the map has changed over time and will continue to change as the years pass. The map included in the article you linked was a file created in 2009.

For example here is a map from a story from USA Today from 2012:
View attachment 208997


I'm in Northeastern KS on the border of MO in the Kansas City Metro and most citizens would consider themselves Tornado Alley and it's def. discussed in school. From 1952-2015 there have been 42 tornadoes in Johnson County (where I live)

Here's a map showing EF3,EF4,EF5s from 1950-2006. If you see where the red area is on the Northeastern part of KS along the border of MO that's Johnson County, as well as other counties.
View attachment 209000 map available on wikipedia page for Tornado Alley.

Those counties in the red area of Northeastern KS are out of the confines of the areas listed as Tornado Alley in the map from the link you posted View attachment 209007 (Kansas portion here only) and yet the greatest number of larger tornadoes were found in that area from the data up to 2006 aside from Central/South Central part of KS which is in the confines of the map in the link you posted.

It's actually kind of interesting because the USA Today map from 2012 closely resembles the map for EF3,EF4,EF5s where the "new tornado alley" was labled on the USA today map.

I included a link, but also put "tornado alley" in quotes for a reason. It is not an actual place, it's a general area. I probably should have spelled that out. FWIW, I know the area you reference quite well. I grew up in Kansas City. Of course it's part of the country that is quite prone to tornadoes.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I included a link, but also put "tornado alley" in quotes for a reason. It is not an actual place, it's a general area. I probably should have spelled that out. FWIW, I know the area you reference quite well. I grew up in Kansas City. Of course it's part of the country that is quite prone to tornadoes.

Hello fellow former Kansas Citian

Yeah I was trying to elaborate. The OP isn't familar with tornadoes at least in the sense that we are so if a person says Tornado Alley they might think the map shown in the link and say "oh I'm not in Tornado Alley so I'm safer". I was more or less pointing out that maps depicting Tornado Alley will vary depending on the parameters and in the case of KC metro it's outside of the boundaries in the map but has more severe tornadoes and has more tornadoes than some of the places in the area shown on the map within the part of Tornado Alley. Didn't want to give a false sense of security was more of what I was going for.

 

[AquamarineSteph]

OK, I have a question on the topic.

I'm a total weather geek. I watch lots of the Weather Channel shows. And I'm always surprised to find how many homes in that part of the country don't seem to have tornado shelters.

There's obviously got to be a reason. My home on Long Island has a basement. (I'm in it right now.) It's not a storm shelter, but would be safer than an interior room upstairs if necessary.

Is there something about the soil or something that makes it harder or more expensive for homes and schools and places of business to be built with basements? Why is it not automatically part of the building plans when a building goes up in the part of the country that has the highest incidence of tornados?

In this part of the South, it is extremely uncommon to find a lot of homes with basements. Some of the newer construction in the city/county has a basement or partial basement, depending on the location and the price tag. I think anything at three quarters of a million comes with at least a partial basement now. There's a LOT of limestone here, and it makes it difficult to build basements because of the blasting required.