Storm Events Database
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Storm Events Database
The database currently contains data from January 1950 to January 2026, as entered by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS). Due to changes in the data collection and processing procedures over time, there are unique periods of record available depending on the event type. The following timelines show the different time spans for each period of unique data collection and processing procedures. Select below for detailed decriptions of each data collection type.Supplemental Information: Supplemental Information:
Add more info about photos and scanned narratives here. Link to collections page/tab when referencing data collection source.
Text Narratives: Since 1993 these narratives have been entered digitally into computer-based records by NWS personnel and loaded into the Storm Events Database.
Image Narratives: Prior to 1993, the narratives were typed for the paper publication and only exist in the scanned paper publications available from the Storm Data Publication. Due to the thousands of records from 1950 to 1993, NCEI cannot manually enter this information. NCEI is using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to detect the sections of the publication documents, available from 1959 to 1993, and translate the scanned paper images into digital text and images of just the narrative text sections. While the accuracy of the narrative translations to text was low, the section detection and event type, location and date detection was significantly more accurate. This allowed NCEI to effectively relate the extracted narrative image sections to the historical data maintained by the NOAA Storm Prediction Center, which is the source of data from 1950-1993 in the Storm Events Database.
The following table shows the number of events from 1959-1993 with matching narrative images available.
| Date Range | Number of Matched Events | Number of Total Events | Percent Available | Example Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 | 260 | 1813 | 14% | Example |
| 1960-1969 | 6139 | 25045 | 24% | Example |
| 1970-1979 | 14823 | 39089 | 38% | Example |
| 1980-1989 | 52399 | 75167 | 69% | Example |
| 1990-1992 | 34241 | 36995 | 92% | Example |
| Total | 107862 | 178109 | 61% |
