Tornadoes have mostly missed Minnesota in 2024, while Iowa has been hammered

It was no surprise that last year, in the midst of a significant drought, we were behind on Minnesota’s tornado count. We had a total of 24 tornadoes in 2023, well below the 30-year average.

What’s surprising, is that this year, we’re still behind. With all the active and wet weather, you’d think we’d have more of the biggest show mother nature can come up with, but alas not. So far, thanks in no small part to Monday’s storms, we’ve seen 25 tornadoes this year. A significant (yet to be determined as of this writing) chunk of those were just from Monday, August 5.

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What makes all of these even more bizarre and fascinating is that nationally, we’re seeing almost one and a half times the normal number of tornadoes for this point in the year.

There have been 1,524 tornadoes reported across the U.S. compared to a normal-to-date of 1,056. The red line below is 2024 and the black line is the average.

What’s even odder? Iowa, our neighbor to our south has had five times more tornadoes than us. You might be saying to yourself 'okay, but Iowa is farther south, wouldn’t they typically have more?' You are correct, but not that many more. The average number of tornadoes to date for Iowa is 42 compared to Minnesota’s 32.If Iowa was seeing tornadoes at our pace this year, it would only have 32, instead it's had a whopping 128.

So while the national number of tornadoes is roughly 1.5 times the average, Iowa is seeing triple their average tornadoes. You can almost make out the signal of dense tornado reports in Nebraska and Iowa on the national 2024 map:

Most people are probably okay with fewer than average tornadoes but in case you’re a storm chaser enthusiast, your consolation is that Minnesota is leading all states for tornadoes in the six days of August so far.

Some summers we get a secondary peak of severe weather sometime in August or early September. Only time will tell if 2024 delivers that.

BMTN Note: Weather events in isolation can't always be pinned on climate change, but the broader trend of increasingly severe weather and record-breaking extremes seen in Minnesota and across the globe can be attributed directly to the rapidly warming climate caused by human activity. The IPCC has warned that Earth is "firmly on track toward an unlivable world," and says greenhouse gas emissions must be halved by 2030 in order to limit warming to 1.5C, which would prevent the most catastrophic effects on humankind. You can read more here .

Related: National Weather Service confirms EF-1 tornado damage in Melrose