[convivialdingo]

I think perhaps there’s likely thousands of tornadoes that never got recorded due to locality in low population areas.

I grew up in tornado alley and can remember many tornadoes that did little or no damage that never got a blip in the news.

Urban areas in 1950 were small compared to today - perhaps our population and technology are just exposing more than we knew before.

[martinpw]

That is actually addressed in czr's video link above, specifically the one minute or so from here:

https://youtu.be/Z_1PiixPX3o?t=881

The key points being:

- Low intensity tornados are not included in the statistics

- rural population in the relevant areas has actually decreased, not increased, over the time period.

- it's hard to explain the variation in metrics as being due to different reporting rates (better explanation in video)