A Comparison of the 1974 and 2011 Super Outbreaks

This project examines two of the most significant tornado outbreaks in United States history: the 1974 Super Outbreak and the 2011 Super Outbreak. I set out to understand how these historic events interacted with metropolitan and urban areas and how the exposure of populated regions to severe weather has changed over time.

Using NOAA tornado initiation point and path data, I mapped the exact locations where each tornado formed and traced its full trajectory across the Midwest, Southeast, and Mid Atlantic. For the 1974 event, this included 148 tornado initiation points and paths. For the 2011 outbreak, the scale expanded dramatically, with 336 tornadoes forming across several days. To evaluate which tornadoes impacted populated regions, I combined these datasets with US Census TIGER files representing metropolitan and urban areas from the closest available census years.

The technical workflow involved filtering tornado data by date, clipping tornado path layers to metropolitan boundaries, merging selected features, and calculating the number of tornadoes intersecting with populated areas. Through this process, I found that 57 tornadoes entered metropolitan or urban regions during the 1974 outbreak, compared with 164 during the 2011 outbreak. This represents almost three times as many tornadoes affecting metropolitan regions in 2011, reflecting both the scale of the event and the expansion of urbanized areas over time.

This project allowed me to explore the relationship between severe weather systems and human settlement patterns. Each line on the map represents not just a meteorological event, but a moment when extreme atmospheric conditions intersected with people, infrastructure, and community life. Mapping these outbreaks through a geographic lens revealed how vulnerable certain regions are to severe weather and how that vulnerability evolves as cities grow.

This work brings together my interests in meteorology, climatology, environmental systems, and human resilience. By visualizing these historic tornado outbreaks with clarity and purpose, I aimed to create maps that help people understand risk, inform preparedness, and see how atmospheric events shape lived experience across space and time.