Tornadoes & Severe Weather
Severe weather on TerraPulse is organized into five parallel Eventdexes — one slot per event, each a measured record of a storm that actually happened. Tornadoes, funnel clouds, hail, damaging thunderstorm wind, and heavy rain each get their own dex, so a study can pull exactly the population it needs. No estimates, no forecasts.
The dexes
The data lives across five parallel Eventdexes, split by phenomenon. The counts are large and honest — the storm record runs deep, and thunderstorm wind and hail dominate it. Counts are live and grow with every fetch:
| Dex | Holds | Events |
|---|---|---|
wind | Damaging thunderstorm wind — measured and estimated gusts | 733,957 |
hail | Hail events, by stone diameter | 420,025 |
tor | Confirmed tornadoes, with EF-scale rating and track | 73,958 |
heavy_rain | Heavy-rain and excessive-rainfall events | 34,038 |
funnel | Funnel clouds — rotation aloft that did not touch down | 16,179 |
Together, over 1.28 million measured severe-weather events.
Provenance
Every event traces to the NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database, the National Weather Service (NWS), and the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) — the confirmed-report record compiled from NWS forecast offices, trained spotters, and SPC's tornado archive. Those sources are registered against the dexes, so any record on TerraPulse carries a direct line back to its originating storm report.
What's in a record
Each event slot carries:
- Type — tornado, funnel, hail, wind, or heavy rain
- Location — latitude, longitude, county, and state
- Time — begin and end time, UTC
- Magnitude — EF scale for tornadoes, diameter for hail, gust speed for wind
- Track — start/end coordinates, length, and width where applicable
- Impact — injuries, fatalities, and damage estimates
Explored in
These dexes are the measured backbone of several TerraPulse investigations: