The news today was buzzing about the remnants of tropical storm Karen making it’s way up the east coast. Here in New Jersey, we’re getting blasted with rain and wind.
A work friend was looking out the window and said, “It’s a good thing we don’t get tornadoes.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
I sat my friend down and showed her The Tornado History Project. They’ve been putting the history of verifiable tornadoes onto a dedicated website. They’re using a combination of historical data plus eye-witness reports, all the way back to 1950. The Tornado History Project was launched by Joshua Lietz in 2005.
New Jersey has had 143 verified tornadoes since 1950. That’s an average of just over 2 every year. This map shows that no part of New Jersey is immune to tornadoes.
The most recent tornado on their website was in 2012, just southeast of Philadelphia.
A small 3-story office building sits just 2 miles east of the tornado’s path. The tenants likely didn’t even know they were in the path and could have suffered a major interruption had the tornado continued.
Did the businesses in this building have voice continuity planning? I doubt it. Cooperative Communications, Inc was still in the process of developing this very new idea at that time.
