1. Weather Patterns in Mississippi in Relation to Occurrence of Tornadoes
Introduction
Results
Tornados occur for a number of reasons. Although they cannot be predicted, there are certain weather patterns that indicate a possible tornado. Tornados are usually caused by a fast moving cold front that sweeps across the Midwest. This cold front draws warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. The cold front is associated with a strong low-pressure storm system that rotates counter clockwise. Here we look at wind storms and hail storms in Mississippi from 1990 to 2016 to see if there is any correlation.
From 1990 to 2016 Mississippi did have quite a bit of severe weather. Glancing at the initial vector data, it would seem that the three aspects of weather if not correlate, then are caused by one another somehow because in all three maps Mississippi was covered in lines. By looking at Figures 1, 2, and 3 one still might make the assumption that these weather patterns are intertwined somehow. However upon glancing at Figure 4 we can see that this is not the case. There was only 1 tornado for the entire month of July in 2016 and where the tornado occurred there was a low amount of both hail and wind storms.
Data
Conclusions
Figure 1. Tornados in Mississippi between
Figure 2. Hail Storms in Mississippi between
The data for this project comes from NOAA’s National Weather Service, Storm Prediction center. This site contains information on this cite contains point and line data for Tornados that have occurred across the united States between the years of This site also contains the same type of data for wind and hail storms but for the years
Based off this data it does not seem that these weather patterns correlate or even cause one another. Mississippi just seems to have been rather unlucky over the years and been hit with quite a bit of severe weather. It would be interesting to see in future research why over the years Mississippi was hit so much, what about it’s position geographically causes all these weather patterns to occur there. It would also be interesting to see what other types of severe weather occur, such as hurricanes and flooding.
Wind
Methods
First I downloaded the vector data from the NOAA and inserted into ArcGIS. Then I created a new model in ArcCatalog that converted the vector data into raster data. Using the select tool I was able to set my parameters to be for the years 1990 to 2016 and to be only for the state of Mississippi. I then saved the data and inserted it as a layer into ArcGIS,
Bibliography
Foutz, Dell R. Tornados. Salem Press Encyclopedia of Science, p.
NOAA’s National Weather Service, Storm Prediction Center.
Hail
Acknowledgements
Drew University, Professor Jordan, ArcGIS, NASA, National Weather Service, Andrew Mellon, Foundation, Colleen Dabrowski.
Figure 3. Wind Storms in Mississippi between
Tornado
Figure 4. Wind storms, hail storms and tornados in July 2016 in Mississippi
Author: Nina Campli