One thing Cecil didn’t mention in his column on tornadoes is that the humble UK seems to be a tornado hot spot. In fact I have read that it records more tornadoes per square mile than any other country (apart from maybe Holland). See http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/07/is-uk-real-tornado-alley.html for example.
Since that link mentions a study that discusses only the formation of tornados in Europe, it would be difficult to assert that the frequency is more than in any other country in the world.
Further, the comparison is inapt. Countries in Europe are small, on the order of states in the United States. The more interesting comparison would be, is the frequency of tornados in England greater than the frequency of tornados in Oklahoma?
Can’t read the study that is linked to in your link, so no way to tell.
Surely the “per unit area” bit deals with that issue. Obviously the USA has more tornadoes than the UK - it’s about 40 times bigger. Of course, the “tornadoes per square mile” of the USA as a whole would be lower than in the tornado-prone zones, as it would include the areas where tornadoes are very infrequent.
Of course the US doesn’t have more tornados due to more trailer parks, tornados form naturally as a function of weather and landscape, just like Cecil said in his article whether here or UK or wherever.
They just gravitate toward trailer parks because of the high electromagnetic fields created by all those refridgerator magnets reacting with the metal box that makes up a trailer. I figure, based on the trailer’s I have been in and the trailer park people I have known, there are more refridgerator magnets per square inch in the average trailer then in two or three average houses.
The same with the UK and all the caravans parked in the 'burbs. I figure the pikeys an such have about the same cultural tendencies to gather fridge magnets as the US trailer people, thus a large number of tornados there as well.
I think that is also why the trailer parks seem to attract more UFOs, gotta be that electromagnetic signature.
Except that your link doesn’t talk about tornados per square mile, it says tornados “per land area.” And the abstract of the linked study says nothing about measuring it in a “per square mile” method.
Which makes sense. Think about it: what boundaries would you use? As you point out, it’s silly to include in a discussion of tornados in America the square miles of Nevada, for example.
Which is why I’m saying: compare to comparable things. Like Oklahoma.
I don’t understand what you mean. “Per land area” means “per square mile”, “per square kilometre”, “per 4.7 square perches”, or whatever you want it to mean. It’s per unit area, so it doesn’t matter what the area is, as long as you compare like with like.