Project: Tornado Hazard and Mobile-Home Vulnerability in the Southeastern U.S.

Author(s): Thomas Owen Borgstedte Jr.

This project maps compound tornado risk across six southeastern states (AL, MS, TN, GA, AR, LA) by joining 75 years of SPC SVRGIS tornado tracks (13,531 tracks, 1950–2025) to 542 TIGER/Line county polygons and merging ACS 5-year mobile-home percentages (table B25024) onto the same units. Tornado counts were normalized to density (tracks/1000 km², equal-area projection) and compared against mobile-home prevalence via choropleths, a median-split overlap classification, and correlation. Hazard and vulnerability proved negatively correlated (Pearson r = −0.267) — dense tornado activity sits in urban counties, mobile homes in rural ones — so neither variable alone locates at-risk populations. The overlap analysis flagged 112 counties (21%), clustered in central/southern Mississippi, west-central Alabama, and northeast Louisiana, as priorities for shelters and warning outreach.

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Thomas Owen

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign




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