Tornado Damage Risk on the Rise in New York

I don’t know about you, but when I think about New York, tornado damage is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind.  But perhaps it should be?  I mean, New York is not in the same universe as middle America when it comes to tornado patterns, but due to the state’s population and infrastructure, a small tornado in the state could have the same impact as a large one elsewhere.

Why the Risk of Tornado Damage is Trending in the Wrong Direction in New York

Again, the risk of tornado damage in New York is less about event frequency and more about the composition of the state.  In fact, New York has experienced only 15 tornado touchdowns in the last 50 years, so it’s not exactly a high-frequency occurrence.  And they are even rarer for New York City.

Unfortunately, the overall tornado risk in the state is expected to increase going forward, according to the new Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Risk Index, which considers 18 kinds of natural disasters, from earthquakes to volcanoes.

The risk in New York is now greater than the risk in more traditional tornado states like Kansas and Oklahoma.  The tornado damage index is higher in New York because:

• The state has a large population, including multiple densely-populated areas like New York City.
• The state has a lot of buildings and expensive property that could be susceptible to damage and create a high cost of recovery.
• The state has a higher-than-average percentage of low-income residents who are less likely to recover from a damaging storm in a quick and efficient manner.
• The state’s residents do not appreciate the magnitude of the risk, so they are less prepared.

Again, the risk is not only about how often a tornado occurs, it’s about how bad the impact would be.  For example, although Oklahoma is twice as likely to get a tornado as New York City, the potential tornado damage is far greater in NYC because there are 20 times the people and 20 times the property value.

This is definitely something that utility companies in the high-risk states like New York need to be aware of when it comes to emergency planning and outage restoration.