You probably won’t hear the Chamber of Commerce touting this, but Atlanta has made a list of the most tornado-prone cities in the country.
The list, compiled by The Atlanta-based Weather Channel’s tornado expert, Dr. Greg Forbes, was developed using 1962-2011 data from the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center.
Forbes added up the areas of the tornado paths within 75 miles of each city on the list, a method that he says “gives a more realistic probability of a particular location getting hit by a tornado than simply using the raw numbers of tornadoes that have occurred within a metro area.”
Seven of the top 10 cities are in the South, including Atlanta at number 8. The other three are in Kansas and Oklahoma.
According to Forbes, the Atlanta area has been hit by more than 70 tornadoes; the strongest being an F4 tornado that touched down in Cobb County in 1992.
His research showed that a total of 662.6 square miles within 75 miles of Atlanta were in the path of a tornado between 1962 and 2011. That compares to 1,520.2 square miles within 75 miles of the number one city, Huntsville, Ala.
Here’s The Weather Channel’s list of top 10 tornado cities:
1. Huntsville, Ala.
2. Jackson, Miss.
3. Birmingham, Ala.
4. Tuscaloosa, Ala.
5. Little Rock, Ark.
6. Tulsa, Okla.
7. Oklahoma City, Okla.
8. Atlanta
9. Wichita, Kan.
10. Nashville, Tenn.
