Strong thunderstorms, hail, damaging winds and tornadoes are all part of severe weather season. There's some new evidence that our area is as prone to tornadoes as Texas and Oklahoma. Some experts are pushing for Indiana to be included in what's long been referred to as "Tornado Alley." We investigated, and found the numbers to back that up.

Many people don't think of Indiana as a part of Tornado Alley. But people in Crumstown, Dunlap, and certainly Nappanee, have seen it first hand. That has some experts saying it should be.

In the traditional Tornado Alley states of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, there are between seven and nine days per year that have tornadoes. Indiana has just as many — seven.

Dr. David Arnold is a severe weather expert who used to teach at Ball State and started the BSU Storm Chase Team. He agrees that Indiana should be considered a part of Tornado Alley.

“I think there's no question that Indiana is in Tornado Alley,” he told WSBT. "Here in Indiana, the frequency is very, very close — the same as it is out there.”

And there are numbers to prove it.

An Alabama company called VorTek publishes a list of the most tornado-prone cities and states. Indiana is ranked sixth in the country, behind the traditional Tornado Alley states of Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Michigan is 20th.

Even more interesting, South Bend is the 14th most tornado-prone city in the country, and ranked higher than cities like Wichita and Houston.

"We take each tornado track and determine how much land it disturbs based on its length of the track and the width,” explained VorTek president Frank Tatum. “We take a particular site like the center of South Bend, we draw a 20-mile radius circle around that center point. In the case of South Bend, that extends up to Michigan, so we're including some tornadoes that are across the line. But anything inside that 20-mile radius we associate with the city of South Bend."

With these eye-opening statistics, Dr. Arnold hopes putting Indiana in Tornado Alley would raise awareness, prompting people to take weather warnings seriously.

But is there a downside? Some think that might mean higher insurance rates.

An insurance agent told WSBT rates are based more on history and not some type of formal designation.

"We look at a lot of different factors in determining rates,” said Deb Childs, an insurance agent in Mishawaka. “There's already a portion of your homeowner’s insurance rates that goes toward catastrophes. We look at what the history has been. We've had some wind storms lately, but that won't impact premiums in the near future.”

Dr. Arnold believes the near future could mean a very active severe weather season in Indiana.

"No question about it,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of things going on. First, it's a La Nina year and that affects the long wave pattern. The other thing is though that the arctic region is still quite cold for this time of year.”

Those ingredients create big temperature differences which are the ideal setup for severe storms.

This has been a very active and deadly severe weather season already across the United States. As of this week, there have been 697 tornado reports this year — almost twice the average of 368.

Unfortunately, those tornadoes have resulted in 69 deaths, almost twice the average of 38. For the entire year of 2005, there were 38 deaths, 67 in 2006, and already we are approaching last year's total of 81.

So far, most of the severe weather has been well to the south of Indiana, but as temperatures start warming up, the threat will start moving north.

For more information, go to the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.