Agenda Packets - 2012/08/13 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Appendix A A-2 Ramsey County Multijurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan | July 2012 How are the latitude and longitudes determined? Storm data is entered into the database as a distance in miles and a direction on 16-point compass scale from a known location, usually a town or city. Example: 4.5 miles ESE Atlanta. The NWS uses a database of over 106,000 cities and towns including their latitudes and longitudes. Using an algorithm, the location 4.5 miles ESE of Atlanta can be derived from the known latitude and longitude of Atlanta. These latitude and longitude pairs are generated by the NWS and populated into the database. The latitude and longitude are in DMS (degrees, minutes, and seconds) format. How are the damage amounts determined? The National Weather Service makes a best guess using all available data at the time of the publication. The damage amounts are received from a variety of sources, including those listed above in the Data Sources section. Property and Crop damage should be considered as a broad estimate. Why is there no lightning strike information? At this time, the only lightning data contained within Storm Data are lightning events that result in fatality, injury, and/or property and crop damage. These events are reported to the NWS for inclusion into the Storm Events Database. If you need information on lightning strikes that do not result in this criteria, you can obtain the lightning strike data from Vaisala here: Vaisala Lightning Strike Data How are tornadoes counted? Tornadoes may contain multiple segments. A tornado that crosses a county line or state line is considered a separate segment. In addition, a tornado that lifts off the ground for less that 5 minutes or 2.5 miles is considered a separate segment. If the tornado lifts off the ground for greater than 5 minutes or 2.5 miles, it is considered a separate tornado. Tornadoes reported in Storm Data and the Storm Events Database are in segments. For official tornado counts by state, please use the Annual Summaries, found here: NCDC Annual Summaries or use the monthly counts at the Storms Prediction Center here: Storms Prediction Center Tornado Data Other information:  Fatality Codes:  For events that include a fatality, there is a code containing the gender, age and fatality location at the end of the event narrative. 1st letter: Gender (M/F) 2nd numbers: Age 3rd letters: Fatality location (see table below) Example: M51IW Male, 51 years of age, fatality occurred In Water.