With the new calendar year, it is probably a good time to reflect back on 2011. The previous year will be remembered as an infamous year for deadly tornadoes in the US. The featured chart presents the yearly total of NWS issued severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings dating back to 1986 along with the total area covered by these warnings. The area value is expressed in normalized units of the size of the continental United States. For example, enough warnings were issued this past year to cover the CONUS seven times over. The total number of warnings came in slightly behind 2008. The large drop in areal coverage of warnings is due to the change to storm based warnings in 2008, which warns for only partial areas of counties.

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Tags:   2011   nws   warnings