Tornado Activity Picks Up In Nation’s Heartland After Dormant Start to May

Good afternoon everyone. Sorry that I haven’t been posting to the blog much the past few days. All that I’ve had time for the past several days is posting something to my weather journal, and maybe issuing a weather report to WEATHERFUN. Well, anyway, I am posting another post to the blog.

When this past April ended, many wondered what was going to be in store for the month of May and the rest of the severe weather season. April 2011 saw over 700 tornadoes, which is about five times the average for the month of April since records have been taken. Among them were the devastating tornadoes in Alabama such as the EF5 that roared through Tuscaloosa and raked the suburbs of Birmingham, and the EF5 that hit Smithville, Mississippi.

Those two tornadoes were among the worst severe weather outbreak since April 1974. It was the deadliest tornado outbreak ever. The Tuscaloosa area was actually affected by severe weather less than two weeks earlier. However, as we got into the month of May, the atmosphere seemed to have taken a deep breath, or perhaps gone into hibernation depending upon how you view things. The eastern half of the United States fell into a stagnant weather pattern.

Two weeks ago, we had a storm system off the East Coast near Bermuda that acted as a barrier to storm systems upstream in the Midwest and Plains. As a result, places such as my hometown saw perhaps the best weather to date. Some of these storms in the middle part of the country produced severe weather, but it wasn’t any that rivaled what we had seen in April. Then, last week, a pesky low pressure system parked itself over the Northeastern United States, and produced a great deal of rain to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and other parts of the Mid-Atlantic.

The jet stream wasn’t strong enough to kick these systems out, and couldn’t provide the energy needed to have severe weather. Within the past several days that has changed in the Midwest and Great Plains. We’ve had more tornadoes in the past three days (78) then we did all month prior (54). As residents cleaned up and tried to rescue others in Joplin, they had to battle through more dangerous weather with thunderstorms that were milder in comparison to the severe weather on Sunday night. There’s more on the way too. The Storm Prediction Center puts Joplin under the gun again on Tuesday.

In addition to Joplin, Missouri being devastated by an EF4 tornado on Sunday night, Minneapolis saw some rough weather as well with an EF2 tornado bringing 100 mile per hour winds to parts of the city. It damaged some 100 homes, and destroyed about 10,000 trees. On Monday night, some of the severe weather moved into the Northeast when a twister touched down near Allentown, Pennsylvania. A tornado warning had been issued for portions of Hunterdon and Warren counties in New Jersey late Monday evening. We still have a week to go in the month of May, and it will be interesting to see whether or not this month will continue to end on a dangerous and deadly note.