The most dangerous States (if you don’t like disasters)

The news cycle has been focused on weather disasters lately, particularly tornados.  Thanks to the Guardian (get the data here) we can now “see” the trouble.  The data covers 1959-2010.  It’d be nice to have 2011 YTD in the dataset as well since there seem to have been so many tornados.

There are many options with which to filter on the right and if you want to see the list of disasters for a state or county, simply click on the bubble.

There are some really cool cuts of the data:

• Filter by hurricanes; the gulf coast lights up!
• I didn’t know North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa had so many floods
• Avoid any states along the Mississippi River if you don’t like tornados (and Georgia too)
• Georgia has had the most recorded tornados since 1959…that both surprises and scares me, especially since they’re in North Georgia
• There have been more earthquakes in Washington state than California.  Who would have thought that?
• 9/11 is categorized as a Terrorist attack in Virginia, yet it’s listed as a Fire in New York.  Data cleanliness at its finest!

Do you see anything else interesting?  There is so much to explore.