Texas Had Its Most Tornadic Year on Record in 2015

Sean Breslin
Published: March 4,2016

A new study has revealed that 2015 was the most tornadic year the state of Texas has seen since meteorologists began keeping records in 1950.
A total of 240 tornadoes touched down during the calendar year, topping 1967 and 1995, when 232 twisters were reported, according to the Insurance Council of Texas (ICT). This is only the fourth year since 1950 that the Lone Star State had at least 200 tornadoes in progress.
“2015 was a banner year for tornadoes in the state of Texas,” Greg Carbin, warning coordination meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center, told ICT. “While many of the tornadoes occurred in May, a resurgence of dangerous weather returned in mid-November, and again in late December. Damaging tornadoes in the Panhandle in November were highly unlikely and the Dec. 26 events in the Dallas area were also quite devastating and rare for that time of year.”
(MORE: Tornado Survivors Share Their Stories in Reddit AMAs)

Texas Tornadoes, By Decade
Create column charts

 

Texas Tornado Yearly Averages, By Decade

Source: Storm Prediction Center

The Dec. 26 event to which Carbin referred spawned at least nine tornadoes that killed 11 people. In total, 17 people were killed by twisters in Texas last year, the report said.
"Rather than blocking high pressure aloft triggering severe to extreme drought, the jet stream returned to the Lone Star State," said weather.com meteorologist Jonathan Erdman. "When that happens, heavy rain and severe weather are a given, in the nation's most tornadic state."
The record-setting year came after just 46 tornadoes were confirmed in 2014, the lowest total since 1953. In 2013, there were 84 tornadoes confirmed, making those two years the only instances of fewer than 100 tornadoes in Texas in a single year since 1988.
(MORE: 'Horrific' Construction Revealed in Texas Tornado Damage Survey)
"Tornado inflation, the increase in reported weak tornadoes since the 20th century due to more widespread spotter networks and advances in technology such as Doppler radar, smartphones and social media may have some role in the 2015 record," said Erdman. "However, 2015 also bucked recent quiet tornado years and a decadal drop since the 1990s."
ICT also said severe weather was responsible for 16 "weather catastrophes" in Texas last year, and those events helped produce three times more insurance claims than any other state.
Here's a look at all of the storm reports in Texas last year. Red dots are reported tornadoes, green dots are hail reports and blue denote reported wind damage.