shaggy

my sons first snow

^Cute kid you have there, Shaggy.

Thanks Calculus he is only 6 lbs 6oz and very tiny.

This pic makes him look bigger and older than he really is. This is me and my almost 2 week old son!

You need more than that. Years with landfalling tropical systems that had no spring tornado outbreak? What constitutes an outbreak? What area does the outbreak occur in and what area does the TC have to make landfall? All you've done so far is not very scientific at all.

I went from Jan 1st through June 30th of all the years I looked at. I stopped at June 30th to prevent any contamination from tropical systems making landfall. I searched NCDC for my info. Once we get back into the 70's tornado reports drop considerably and many were probably not reported like they have been in the last 30 years or so.

There were 17 years without a landfalling tropical system. The average tornado count between Jan 1st and June 30th for those non-landfalling years is 8.8 tornado confirmations(doesn't mean there weren't more that went unreported). Of the landfalling years which equaled 9 years the average number of tornado confirmations was 28.4 for NC. If you add this year to the numbers we have 65 tornadoes on the NCDC site http://www4.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-win/wwcgi.dll?wwevent~storms that I am using and that increases the average to 32.1 for years with landfalling tropical systems.

Years that have had landfalls 32.1 average

years without 8.8.

Not scientific but the numbers speak pretty clearly......feel free to provide me evidence that my numbers are wrong.

Nice find & impressive work. Props to you and Shaggy

Thanks. It started out as just a casual conversation between me and downeast(we're brothers) and it just kinda went from there. As we found more interesting numbers the more we looked into it.

This now makes 5 out of 6 years with 30+ tornadoes in the spring with subsequent landfalling tropical systems.

A little more breakdown by the numbers:

Of the years where 30+ tornadoes were confirmed we have

1984 with 34 T's and Hurricane Diana

1996 with 31 T's and Bertha/Fran

1998 with 54 T's and Bonnie

2008 with 45 T's and Ernesto

2009 with 31 T's No storm

Thats 80% of those years with a subsequent landfall. The only year that didn't 2009 was a down year for the tropics with a well below avg of just 8 named storms.

Next group of numbers is 20-30 Tornadoes and that was one year only

1989 with 24 T's Hurricane Hugo

Next group 14-20 tornadoes

1991 with 17 T's No landfall(close call with bob)

1999 with 14 T's Dennis/Floyd

2000 with 19 T's No storm

2003 with 17 T's Isabel

2004 with 19 T's Charley

2006 with 18 T's Hanna

So thats 4 out of 6 years with landfalling storms.

We are currently sitting in the over 30 T's range for the year so that puts us in the highest % for POSSIBLE tropical action this year.

It has been brought to my attention that while I focused on NC landfalls only the SE did in fact sustain a hit in 1989 which had an elevated tornado number. Hugo was in that year and struck SC instead of recurving into NC.

That's not the greatest sample size but some interesting statistics nonetheless. Seems like the similar patterns (incoming troughs) produce tornadoes and NC landfalls. Years with big ridging likewise would not be great for tornado outbreaks and would suppress TC tracks to the south and into FL/GOM.

Well I was afraid of going outside of that sample size because of the possibility that alot of tornadoes in the 50's-60's and 70's may have gone unreported or were reported as straightline wind damage. With the increase in basic observations of the general public and dopplar radars the tornado data is much more reliable over the last 25 years.

The numbers are interesting and I guess we will see what happens come hurricane season but just found it very interesting. We are over 30 tornadoes this year already so this will be a good year to see if this possible correlation holds up.

Heres my best shot at running some stats off the NCDC stats page. Any of you guys that are better with statistics than I am please feel free to correct me if I have made an error somewhere

ok here are the numbers using the NCDC storm event pages stats. I used Jan 1st to June 30th as my sample dates.

Of the years we have seen landfalling tropical storms and hurricanes in NC we saw 8 years since 1984. Those years are

1984- Diana

1996- Bertha/Fran

1998-Bonnie

1999- Dennis/Floyd

2003-Isabel

2004-Charley

2006-Ernesto

2008-Hanna

In those 8 years we had a total of 232 tornadoes with an avg of 29 a year.

In the other 18 years of no tropical landfalls we have a total of 174 tornadoes and an avg of only 9.6 a year. This number is thrown off by 2 of those years that saw high tornado counts in 1989 with 24 and 2009 with 31. So those 2 years account for 55 out of the 174 total. 2009 only had 8 named tropical systems all year as well.

4 out of the 8 years with tropical landfalls had years with 30+ plus tornadoes.

IMO there seems to be a pattern of more tropical activity in general for NC when we have an active spring with lots of tornadoes.