Authority control databases
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
Thomas P. Grazulis | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 17, 1942 |
| Alma mater | Florida State University |
| Known for | tornado history, statistical, and climatology research |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Meteorology |
| Institutions | The Tornado Project |
Thomas P. Grazulis (born August 17, 1942) is an American meteorologist who has written extensively about tornadoes and is head of The Tornado Project.
Thomas Grazulis grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts and first confronted the power of a tornado at age 11 following the violent 1953 Worcester tornado, an F4 which killed 94 people and passed approximately 1 mi (1.6 km) north of his childhood home.[1]
Grazulis earned a bachelor's degree in meteorology from Florida State University (FSU) and was briefly a broadcaster, in part presenting the weather. He was a science teacher in New Jersey and worked on the "Earth Science Curriculum Project" with the National Science Foundation (NSF). He and his wife Doris, also a teacher and a small business operator, then moved to the St. Johnsbury, Vermont area in 1970.[2] In 1972, he and Doris released Approaching the Unapproachable, a documentary film on tornadoes that was the first to consider tornadoes in a scientific context rather than as a hazard and was the first compilation of tornado footage.[3]
In 1979 Grazulis began working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in creating a history of tornadoes. Specifically, he worked on refining and augmenting the databases of tornadoes maintained by the National Severe Storms Forecast Center (NSSFC) in Kansas City, Missouri as well as the database headed by Ted Fujita at the University of Chicago, with whom he collaborated when developing their respective databases. The objective was to determine tornado occurrence and intensity distributions, i.e. tornado climatology, for risk assessment studies. Grazulis' tornado database work was considered important enough that it was followed by five years of funding from the National Science Foundation.[1]
In the process Grazulis traveled the country visiting dozens of libraries, museums, university archives, historical societies, and the like, to eventually chronicle 60,000 tornadoes, 50,000 of them included in a single 1,400 page book that is widely referenced. He is estimated to have read 25,000 microfilm reels of mostly major newspapers. His work concentrated in state libraries and the U.S. Library of Congress but also included local libraries when pertinent. The first book (which was two volumes), results from the NRC funded work, was Significant Tornadoes, 1880-1989. Sales of the book filled a gap in tornado information and strong sales led to an expansion, Significant Tornadoes, 1680-1991. In turn, sales of this book and of Tornado Project videos and posters were robust enough that an update was published for the years 1992–1995. Significant Tornadoes contains 51 photographs of tornadoes prior to 1970, the most extensive collection published.[4] Grazulis amassed one of three authoritative tornado databases, those being the National Tornado Database assembled and maintained by NOAA agencies, the University of Chicago DAPPL database founded by Fujita which ended at his retirement in 1992, and the Grazulis Tornado Project database. As of 2014, the Grazulis database spans from 1680-1995 and includes all known significant tornadoes (those rated F2-F5 or causing a fatality).
In the early 1990s he and Doris formed The Tornado Project to market tornado videos, books, and posters.[4] He collaborated with storm chaser Roy Britt to produce the popular Tornado Video Classics documentary series. In 1995 they adapted for television broadcast on The Learning Channel their collection, producing less advanced direct-to video documentaries catering to a wider audience, including Twister: Fury on the Plains and Twister: Nature's Fury.[1] His book Significant Tornadoes is considered a critical and authoritative source among severe storms meteorologists.[3]
In 1997 he became a storm chaser noting that despite his fascination with storms he had never actually seen a tornado. He saw his first tornado, a very large one, near Tulsa, Oklahoma on Memorial Day of that year.[1] By the late 1990s, Grazulis also constructed a variety of designs of physical simulator models of vortices. He used these for air flow experiments and for displays.[5] Grazulis had long been interested in tornado simulators and included earlier laboratory studies in his TVC documentaries. The Secrets of the Tornado documentary featured a detailed instructional section with an accompanying printed guide for constructing one's own.
A page on The Tornado Project's website in 2018 indicates Significant Tornadoes will be updated and released in two volumes of approximately 705 pages each covering tornadoes from 1680 to 1949 and 1950 to 2019. The new volumes will include updates on statistics, graphs, and charts, as well as analysis of trends in tornadic activity and examination of potential influence thereof by climate change.[6]
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See also: List of tornado outbreaks by outbreak intensity score |
As part of his book Significant Tornadoes 1974–2022, released in 2023, Grazulis created a new scale called the Outbreak Intensity Score (OIS) to rank tornado outbreaks.[7][8] For the OIS, only significant tornadoes, those rated F2 to F5 on the Fujita scale and those rated EF2 to EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale are used for the score of the outbreak. F2/EF2 tornadoes are given 2 points, F3/EF3 tornadoes are given 5 points, F4/EF4 tornadoes are given 10 points, and F5/EF5 tornadoes are given 15 points.[7][8]
| Type of outbreak | Weak | Minor | Significant | Major | Devastating | Historic | Super |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of points |
2–6 | 7–10 | 11–29 | 30–79 | 80–119 | 120–249 | 250+ |
Grazulis is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and was on the Fujita Scale Forum of the Fujita Scale Enhancement Project; which developed the Enhanced Fujita scale to supplant the original Fujita scale.
Grazulis initially produced documentaries on the Earth sciences before focusing on tornadoes and publishing books. He expanded to direct-to-video documentaries (which include extensive printed guides) and posters (with complementary background sheets) in the 1990s. Grazulis also wrote for Storm Track magazine and presented at meteorological and storm chaser conferences. The following is a list of his major works:
Grazulis in 2001 penned a book for a general readership, an homage and unofficial update to Snowden D. Flora's classic Tornadoes of the United States (1953), entitled The Tornado: Nature's Ultimate Windstorm. Both were published by the University of Oklahoma Press.
