MADISON, WI (SPECTRUM NEWS) — Researchers at UW-Madison say that 2019 has seen far more tornadoes than average so far.

Leigh Orf, one of those researchers, has pioneered a way to simulate tornadoes. He says the last few weeks have seen unusually high tornado activity, but forecasters were able to see it coming.

“We knew this was going to be an especially strong storm season, at least we thought it was, and it turned out indeed it is,” Orf said.

As far as activity goes it's as high as he's seen since 2011.

Shane Hubbard — another research scientist at UW-Madison — agrees. Especially when you look at what the Space Science and Engineering Department has tracked.

“This year, in comparison to when we've been collecting records all the way back to the 50s that we're up to the top end through may 29^th in terms of the numbers of tornadoes that we've counted,” Hubbard said.

On the roof of their building in Madison they collect about eight terabytes per day of climate and weather data from around the world. They re-distribute about five terabytes of it.

They have about 16 petabytes stored in a super computer.

So that's a lot of data. John Cintineo — one of Hubbard and Orf's fellow researchers — has been working with meteorologists around the country to boil it down with something called Probserve.

He says quickly processing all of it could mean doubling the amount of time forecasters can give as a heads up to people from 10 or 15 minutes to 20 or 30.

“That's really exciting and humbling and this is actually going into official national weather service operations next year,” Cintineo said.

But then there's planning for when tornadoes run through towns or cities. Hubbard works with emergency managers to ensure safety if a tornado does hit their city or town. He's made models for where a tornado going through cities like Madison or Cincinnati would leave damages.

“In terms of city planning I think things are going very well, there's a lot more messaging today than there ever was in the past,” Hubbard said.

Couple that with better building practices and Hubbard says deaths from tornadoes have gone down over the past several decades.

Hubbard suggests people make a plan so they aren't scrambling if a tornado is coming. That includes knowing where to go as well as having supplies to last an extended power outage.

There have been studies on a short-term trend that shows an increase in the amount of tornadoes a little further east in the U.S.

“When we talk about risk and vulnerability that is the absolute worst thing you would want. Is when you put a high hazard event out into a higher populated area,” Hubbard said.

Though UW-Madison researchers say it's still too small of a sample size to say for certain if that trend will continue.

“It does look like is a shift a little bit, it's still early days as far whether I'm going to say if this is a trend that is going to continue,” Orf said.

Orf said the cycle that has produced such an impressive volume of tornadoes over the past few weeks is likely to end in the next few days. Though the UW researchers warn that Wisconsin's usual tornado season begins in June.

“Even though it might be slowing down a little bit nationwide, in Wisconsin it's likely to, the activity is likely to ramp up in the next month,” Cintineo said.