US Tornadoes Surge Toward Record

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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US Tornadoes Surge Toward Record

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[cnxvideo id=”509733″ placement=”ros”]There have been 570 tornadoes so far this year, a spike that takes the number well above average. With an increase in unsettled weather, the figure could break the record for tornadoes in a single year.

The tornado season varies across the country by region. In the Southeast it is March and April. In the upper Midwest it is in June and July. May is the peak month nationwide.

According National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate.gov:

The 2017 tornado season across the United States has gotten off to an active start. As of April 17, 570 tornadoes have been reported (preliminarily), which is almost a hundred more than average. The season jumped out of the gate with an incredibly active January: 134 tornadoes in total—more than triple the long-term average—and an especially radical departure from the past three years, during which the average number of January tornados was just 16.

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Annual tornado insured property losses can top $10 billion a year. Insured losses from tornadoes and severe weather reached $8.6 billion in 2015 and $12.3 billion in 2014.

While the current pace might make 2017 a record year for tornado activity, there is a chance this activity will taper off in the next few months. Climate.gov reports:

As for the current tornado season, with a preliminary total of 558 tornadoes, the 2017 season is already more than halfway to the seasonal total of just a year ago. However, an overactive start to the tornado season doesn’t mean it will stay that way.

Nevertheless, the odds are that this season will produce a number of storms that will be well above the average for others.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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