Crazy weather: tornadoes edition

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Last year, tornadoes tore through the southeastern United States, destroying home and even whole towns.

The weather is going haywire in recent seasons, with record temperature highs, busier and more destructive hurricane seasons, and freak storms like the one the left millions without power earlier this month.

Data visualization specialist John Nelson, who told io9 he and his employer are interested in studying risk, has created a beautiful series of maps showing all the tornadoes that have occurred in the United States since 1950.

Using information from public databases, Nelson's maps show the path and Fujita scale rating, which measures intensity.

Check out the composite, and the F-scale breakdowns above, as well as a time-lapse video, showing storms by year, below.