Storm Desk

The Storm Desk puts NOAA’s Storm Events Database, every recorded U.S. storm event from 1950 through 2024, into an explorer anyone can use.¹ There’s nothing to install and no account to make, and every chart is computed in your own browser.

How to use it

• Filter by event type, state, years and measure (events, deaths, injuries or damage). Every chart, the map and the event list update together.
• Map: Locations shows where events happened, grouped into a grid that sharpens as you zoom, down to single events you can click. By state shades every state, including events that have no coordinates.
• Near me centers the map on you. Limit everything to the map area then narrows the whole page to what’s on the map. Your exact location never leaves your browser.
• Share a view by copying the address bar. Filters and map area are saved in the link.
• Click any event for NOAA’s own account of what happened, the toll and where it began.

Reading the data honestly

Storm records changed far more than storms did, and that matters most when comparing today with the past. To compare two eras fairly, with damage adjusted for inflation, use Then & Now.

• Record-keeping changed. The database holds only tornadoes for 1950–1954, and only tornadoes, thunderstorm wind and hail from 1955 through 1992. The modern list arrives in 1996: 34 different event types that year, and about 50 a year lately.² The jump in the chart above is mostly paperwork, not weather. Compare like with like: the same event type, in years when it was recorded the same way.
• Damage is in nominal dollars. A 1960 dollar isn’t a 2024 dollar, and the figures aren’t adjusted for inflation.
• Deaths count only when they’re attributed to a weather event, and attribution practices vary across places and over time.
• Not everything has a location. About 61% of events have coordinates. Zone-reported hazards like heat, winter storms and drought don’t, so the By state view is the complete one.

How it’s built

The database is pre-summarized into compressed files that your browser downloads and queries as you explore, so the Storm Desk runs as a plain static website with no server. The code is open source.

Sources

1. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/stormevents/ ↩

2. Counted from the database itself: the number of distinct event types recorded in each year, 1950–2024. ↩