Florida and the rest of the Southeast are reported to be more vulnerable to tornadoes, a new analysis shows, The Associated Press reported.
Florida leads the country in deaths calculated per mile a tornado races along the ground, followed by Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio and Alabama, according to an analysis of the past three decades by the federal Southeast Regional Climate Center at the University of North Carolina, according to the AP.
That's because Florida is at the top of the list on so many factors that make tornadoes more risky: mobile homes, the elderly and the poor, said center director Charles Konrad II, who headed the new work, the AP reported.
"People are just much more vulnerable in a mobile home than they are in a regular home," Konrad said, according to the AP.
Florida's death rate of 2.4 deaths per 100 miles of tornado ground track is more than two-and-a-half times that of Oklahoma and nearly five times that of Kansas, the AP reported.
Along with Florida, Dixie Alley, which includes Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, western parts of the Carolinas, is where "more people die from tornadoes" than anywhere else in the world, said Conrad, according to the AP.
Three years ago, a four-day outbreak of more than 200 tornadoes killed 316 people in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia, the AP reported.
Florida doesn't get as many tornadoes as Oklahoma and they aren't as strong, but when Florida does get them, "people are especially vulnerable," Konrad said, according to the AP. He presented the research at an American Meteorological Society meeting in Colorado this week.
Konrad's work makes sense and fits with earlier research on tornado fatalities, said Florida State University meteorology professor James Elsner and Barb Mayes Boustead, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist and tornado chaser, the AP reported.
