Tornado Publications

This page highlights Natural Hazards Center-supported reports, data publications, and other resources focused on tornadoes. Many of these studies were carried out in the immediate or longer-term aftermath of major events that caused widespread damage. These projects detail the human effects of these storms, while also offering recommendations to reduce future harm from tornadoes.

As more people across the United States are affected by tornadoes and other extreme events, we hope the methodological approaches and findings from this prior work can inform the research response and future recovery efforts.

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Quick Response Research Award Program

Since 1986, the Natural Hazards Center has administered the Quick Response Research Award Program. This program, which is made possible with funding from the National Science Foundation, encourages the ethical collection of perishable data in the aftermath of disaster. The following twenty-seven Quick Response Research Reports contain insights on tornado warnings, preparedness, and response, risk factors for fatalities, and considerations of psychological impacts, community healing, recovery, and much more.

QR296 | Solidarity and Storytelling: Debris and Visual Expressions of Collective Community After the 2019 Lee County, Alabama, Tornado (2020)
Sarah DeYoung and John Knox

QR252 | High School Football as a Catalyst for Disaster Recovery: The Case of the November 17, 2013 Washington, Illinois Tornado (2014)
Nick Swope and Jack Rozdilsky

Weather Ready Research Award Program

The Natural Hazards Center—with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation—established the Weather Ready Research Award Program to promote knowledge and build a diverse cadre of weather ready researchers.

Since 2019, this program has supported dozens of studies of various weather hazards, including the 5 Weather Ready Research Reports on tornadoes, highlighted here. These reports focus on tornado risk perception, human behavior, and institutions serving socially vulnerable populations.

Call 1: Weather Ready Research

This first call for Weather Ready Research supported social science and multidisciplinary research to identify how members of diverse publics—including National Weather Service stakeholders—receive, interpret, and respond to warnings and forecasts of high impact weather events that endanger life and property and how to best communicate weather events to various stakeholders.

The tornado reports highlighted below include a case study from Tennessee and an examination of public response to concurrent hazards.

WR2 | The March 2020 Tennessee Tornadoes: Risk Perceptions, Preparedness, and Communication (2022)
Amanda Reinke, Jaymelee Kim, and Erin Eldridge

WR1 | Examining Public Response and Climate Conditions During Overlapping Tornado and Flash Flood Warnings (2022)
Jennifer M. First, Kelsey Ellis, and Stephen Strader

Call 2: Weather Ready Instrument and Data Publications

This call supported training and the publication of social science and multidisciplinary data, data collection instruments, and research protocols for weather-related research via the NHERI DesignSafe Cyberinfrastructure and through the CONVERGE facility. The full publication reference and link to dataset is listed below.

Elaina Sutley. (2021). "PRJ-3298: Local Perceptions on Building Safety and Building Performance after the 2019 EF4 Linwood, Kansas Tornado." DesignSafe-CI. https://www.designsafe-ci.org/data/browser/public/designsafe.storage.published/PRJ-3298.

Call 3: Tornado Ready Quick Response Research

The third call for Weather Ready Research supported social science and multidisciplinary research to identify how community members receive, interpret, and respond to tornado watch and warning messages.

WR11 | How College Students’ Home Region Influences Their Risk Perceptions and Behaviors During Tornadoes (2024)
Amy Hyman and Joseph Richmond

WR10 | Sheltering Behavior During the December 2021 Tornado in Mayfield, Kentucky (2023)
John Mathias, Brandi Skipalis, Sanoop Valappanandi, Tisha Holmes, David Lafontant, Eren Erman Ozguven, Onur Alisan, Mehmet Kaya, Tyler McCreary, Efraim Roxas, and Austin Bush

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Mitigation Matters Research Award Program

The Natural Hazards Center—with supplemental funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency—established the Mitigation Matters Research Award Program to provide funding for researchers focused on natural hazard mitigation and other forms of risk reduction. This program is designed to support mitigation research that reduces loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters.

Please see below for a Mitigation Matters Research Report and Research Brief focused on rebuilding after a tornado.

MM11 | Rebuilding after a Tornado: The Role of Homeowners Insurance in Recovery (2022)
Ji Yun Lee and Guirong (Grace) Yan
View the Research Brief

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Research Counts

The Research Counts series serves as a platform for hazards and disaster scholars to provide insights about research findings and the enduring lessons of disaster, as well as to raise new questions that are worthy of exploration. The pieces in the series are brief, drawn from a variety of disciplines, and intended for a broad audience. The article below focuses on various hazards that pose a threat to America’s schools, with examples from schools destroyed or threatened by tornadoes.

Peek, Lori. (2018, April 7) America’s Deathtrap Schools. The New York Times, https://hazards.colorado.edu/news/research-counts/america-s-deathtrap-schools