The people of this land have a longstanding tradition of depending on the weather for their livelihood. Despite the harsh reality of drought and severe weather, the region has the highest percentage of land farmed in the United States, and remains a critical supplier of food for the 300-plus million people living in the U.S.

Tornadic Numbers

Although it covers just 15 percent of the United States, Tornado Alley lays claim to nearly 30 percent of all the confirmed tornadoes in the Storm Prediction Center’s database between 1950 and 2012. Of the 58,046 tornadoes on record in that period, 16,674 of those occurred in Tornado Alley, which is a long-term average of 268 tornadoes per year.

A tornado’s severity is ranked by something called the Enhanced Fujita Scale (previously just Fujita Scale). This scale ranks tornadoes by estimated wind strength, with EF0 (gusts of 65 to 85 miles per hour) being the weakest, and EF5 (winds over 200 miles per hour) being the strongest.

There are 59 confirmed F5 or EF5 tornadoes on record, and 37 percent (22) of those have occurred in Tornado Alley. In fact, for each strength category the distribution is about the same. Those within Tornado Alley account for about 35 percent. The exception is EF0 tornadoes, with 51 percent of those occurring in Tornado Alley.

Deadly tornadoes happen every year, but they’re atypical of your normal tornado—despite how it might seem.

Data obtained from the Tornado History Project shows there were 5,587 confirmed fatalities blamed on tornadoes across the United States between 1950 and 2012. Of those, 1,110 occurred in Tornado Alley. This from just 1,561 deadly tornadoes during the span. While only 2 percent of tornadoes were deadly nationwide, some are hugely devastating.

Injuries caused by tornadoes are much more numerous. For the same period, there were 64,054 injuries reported across the United States, which averages out to just over 1,000 per year. Twenty-four percent of those injuries occurred in Tornado Alley.

The two charts below show total injuries (left) and total fatalities (right) in five year increments between 1950 and 2012. Note the very similar patterns — many lives lost during the sixties and seventies, and seasonal spikes in March, April, and May, as well as well as during the “second season” in November.

While Tornado Alley can lay claim to the highest count of tornadoes as compared to any other region across the United States, many are weak, short-lived tornadoes. Colorado, for example, though hosting the county in the U.S. with the most tornadoes on record, only two F/EF4 tornadoes have been recorded between 1950 and 2012, and zero F/EF5 tornadoes. The strongest, long-lived tornadoes tend to occur well east of the Rockies, across the eastern two thirds of Tornado Alley and into Dixie and Hoosier Alley.