A brief perusal of any introductory meteorology textbook shows that tornado frequency is highest in a band from the central Great Plains across north Texas and east to Georgia, with a significant local minimum in north Louisiana. An analysis of National Weather Service storm reports from the period 1950 to 1997 considered tornado occurrence across a 26 parish area of north Louisiana, examining frequency and strength of tornadoes by parishes and in North Louisiana as a whole. It is believed that most tornadoes that strike Louisiana are weak, generally ranging from F0 to F2 on the Fujita scale. Stronger tornadoes are possible in some sections of the region. Several plausible explanations of this distribution are given