For each tornado, the date in the form month-day-year is given. In the next column, the hour and minutes (to the nearest minute) that the tornado touched down are given, using a 24-hour clock. Most times are EST (Eastern Standard time), CST (Central Standard Time), MST (Mountain Standard Time), or PST (Pacific Standard time).
The next two columns are the latitude and longitude (in degrees and minutes) of tornado touchdown. For example, 3517 means 35 degrees 17 minutes North latitude, while 10646 means 106 degrees, 46 minutes West longitude. For some tornadoes (especially those with longer paths), an ending latitude/longitude pair is also given in the next two columns. If these columns are blank, this information was not given in the original database.
The next two columns contain the path length (in miles) and average path width (in feet) of the tornado. If no information was supplied, the space is left blank. If a tornado crosses state boundaries, the path length includes only that part of the tornado's path in the state of interest.
The next two columns list the injuries and fatalities resulting from the tornado in the state of interest. The next column gives the Fujita-Scale rating of the tornado. If a "W" follows the F-Scale rating, then the event in question was a waterspout or a waterspout that moved ashore. Finally, at the far right are the county codes indicating the counties affected by the tornado. Here are the files for decoding these numerical codes. When more than one county is listed, the counties are given in the order in which the tornado struck.