Storm Desk

Then & Now

Are storms getting worse, or are we counting more? Both can be true, and the records alone can't always tell them apart. This page compares two eras only where NOAA counted the same way in both, and says plainly where it can't. How it works →

Pick two spans of years. For every kind of event NOAA recorded in every year of both, you'll see the yearly average then and now. Counts are recorded events, not storms: more reports can mean more storms, or more radar and trained spotters noticing them.⁴ Damage is adjusted for inflation to 2024 dollars unless you choose otherwise.

Then From To

Now From To

Preset State Measure Dollars

The comparison

Loading the storm records…

The tornado lens

Can't be compared yet

What the record can't tell us

Sources

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database, 1950–2024. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/stormevents/
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average, not seasonally adjusted [CPIAUCNS], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Annual values are the average of the 12 months. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCNS
NOAA Storm Prediction Center, Enhanced F Scale for Tornado Damage: "implemented in the U.S. on 1 February 2007." https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/ef-scale.html
NOAA Storm Prediction Center, The Enhanced Fujita Scale: tornado reports "increased dramatically in the 1990s" as the National Weather Service installed Doppler radar and trained storm spotters. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/efscale/
NOAA Storm Prediction Center, The Online Tornado FAQ: the records count "county-segments of tornado tracks"; rating damage on the original F scale was "largely a judgment call--quite inconsistent and arbitrary"; for strong to violent (EF2–EF5) tornadoes, "very little overall change has occurred since the 1950s." https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/