The Disaster Center Ranking of Tornado Risk by State

Rank  State  Factor 
1  Indiana  4.25 
2  Massachusetts  4.25 
3  Mississippi  6.75 
4  Oklahoma  8.25 
5  Ohio  8.25 
6  Illinois 8.75 
7  Alabama  8.75 
8  Louisiana  9.5 
9  Arkansas  11 
10  Kansas  11.75 
11  Florida  12.75 
12  Georgia  13.25 
13  Connecticut  13.25 
14  Iowa  15.25 
15  Missouri  15.25 
16  Tennessee  16 
17  Texas  17 
18  Michigan  17.25 
19  Delaware  18.5 
20  South Carolina  18.75 
21  Kentucky  19.25 
22  Nebraska  20.25 
23  North Carolina  20.25 
24  Pennsylvania  20.25 
25  Wisconsin  20.75 
26  Minnesota  22 
27  Maryland  25 
28  South Dakota  29.75 
29  Virginia  29.75 
30  North Dakota  30.25 
31  New Jersey  30.75 
32  New York  31.25 
33  Rhode Island 32.5 
34  Colorado  35 
35  West Virginia 35 
36  New Hampshire 38 
37 Wyoming  39 
38  Arizona  39.25 
39  Washington  39.25 
40  New Mexico  40 
41  Maine  40.25 
42  Hawaii  41.25 
43  Vermont  42 
44  Montana  42.75 
45  California  44.5 
46  Idaho  46.25 
47  Oregon  46.5 
48  Utah  48 
49  Nevada  48.75 
50  Alaska  49.75 
When we consider tornado risk we should not just consider the likelihood of a tornado striking a particular State. We should also consider the risks of death, injury and the costs of tornadoes for locations based on the size of the State.
The Disaster Center bases it's risk assessment by dividing the square mileage of each state against the frequency of death, injury, number of tornadoes, and cost of damages for each state. We then rank each State by these individual categories. We then add the total of each State's indiviual rankings and divided by the number of factors (four). The data used covers the period of 1950 -1995
The period of the data is somewhat limited, but the results are interesting. The fact's presented here challenge some present day assumptions about where tornado risk is greatest.