Hey everyone! I know it’s been a little bit, but I’ve come to hype you up for tornadoarchive v2. Because let me tell you, there’s a lot. Let’s start with the features we promised in my original post.
Environment Browser
Perhaps the most important new feature is the addition of ERA5 reanalysis data, allowing you to view tornado outbreaks in the context of their environment. For about 2000 US/Canada tornado days and a smattering of European events, that’s now easier than ever. Beneath the tornado paths, you can enable a dewpoint, temperature, 850 or 500mb wind, or a CAPE+Hodograph map. These maps can then be animated for up to 72 hours (meaning you could watch the entire 2011 super-outbreak at once!). A lot of optimization has been done to ensure that the environment data will load extremely quickly, and navigation to individual dates is easy.
There are a few ways to get to specific dates to view the environment browser.
- Type in the date in the Temporal tab
- Click on a specific tornado path you want to know more about, and then click on the date. It will take you to the specific date.
- Click on the green bar above the date in the environment timeline, and you’ll be taken directly to that date. The green bar only appears above days for which environment data is available.
Another new addition is the ability to toggle between showing all, hourly, or no tornadoes in the Temporal tab. By default, when an animation is not running, all tornadoes within the selected time period are shown. However, if you want to scrub through hourly to view only the tornadoes for a certain environment, you can switch the toggle to hourly. Additionally, you can hide tornadoes entirely and just look at the environmental reanalysis.
International Tornadoes
Due to the hard work of our team (Shoutout to Malcolm and Cheo especially), we’ve also been able to compile an unprecedented number of international tornadoes. By switching to a different domain in the Filters tab, you can view historical tornadoes worldwide, coming from a multitude of different data sources. As of now, we have data for the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Bermuda, all of Europe (and surrounding areas), Bangladesh and East India, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. While these databases are at varying levels of quality and completeness, this is by far the most comprehensive collection of tornadoes ever. Be on the lookout for a blog post from Malcolm talking about the difficulties of compiling such a truly phenomenal database.
High Fidelity 2020 and 2021 tracks
With this update, we’re also adding high resolution track paths from the last two years. Instead of being merely a two point track, every US tornado from these years has full detail from NCDC and DAT data. While there’s still a lot of room for improvement across the rest of the database, any recent tornado tracks can be viewed at the highest available level of detail. Additionally, a non-insignificant number of pre-1950 tracks have been upgraded too, so make sure to look around and see what’s new.
Miscellaneous Features
- A surprise me button on the Temporal tab that takes you to a random date with environment data.
- Coastline and Terrain plotting on the basemap
- Timeline now goes back to 1700 to include most of the European database. The timeline will likely go back to year 0 at some point, but not in this version.
- Darkened the EFU color. This was done to remove the implication of weakness, as the strength of many international tornadoes is unknown.
- Country and num-states filters in the Filters tab
- General speed/responsiveness optimizations