I thought it would be interesting to look at the numbers from this week's severe weather outbreak, because some in the media have claimed this outbreak was unprecedented.

Here's what we have. First up, spotter reports transmitted to the Storm Prediction Center. These numbers were obtained directly from the SPC reports as of this morning.

Notice that wind was the big story Thursday, while hail was out of control Sunday, along with tornadoes.

The total of 1,516 storm spotter reports in 7 days (or 1,442 in 5 days) certainly sounds pretty impressive. Of course, as spotters increase, so do spotter reports, and many of these are duplicates but those aren't filtered out as far as I know.

I don't have great records of the number of spotter reports last year, but spot checking May 2003 which I recall as fairly terrific (in the classic sense of the word), we find:

May. 6th - May 10th, 2003 (5 Days): 1,996 Reports
Apr. 30th - May 4th, 2003 (5 Days): 1,900 Reports

So, strictly from a spotter reports point of view, this severe outbreak was easily exceeded in 2003, and I would wager probably since then as well.

Next up, the number of Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Warnings issued:

These numbers also sound outlandish, even for March. If you take the highest days and add them up, you get just over 1,000 Severe Thunderstorm Warnings issued:

Mar. 9th - 14th, 2006 (6 Days): 1,001

This sounds like a heck of a lot of warnings. But how short-term is our memory? If you graph the last year of Severe Thunderstorm Warnings, it looks something like this (click to enlarge):

Notice that we did not see the highest one-day total, and even if you add up multiple days, you can see that we did not see the highest 6-day (or 3-day) total:

Jun. 5th - 7th, 2005 (3 Days): 1,085
Jul. 1st - 6th, 2005 (6 Days): 1,123
May. 8th - 13th, 2006 (6 Days): 1,133
Jul. 22nd - 27th, 2005 (6 Days): 1,150
Jun. 5th - 10th, 2005 (6 Days): 1,790

So, while it was an unusual amount of warnings for March, several similar time-spans beat it last year.

But I don't want to lessen the power of this severe weather outbreak, all I'm saying is that we should look at the numbers.

Perhaps the most important number, the number of confirmed tornadoes per day, is not something for which I have stats readily available. That might be the record that Sunday might break.

From a monthly standpoint, 100 tornadoes is far from the monthly totals during May or June, but we're way above 2003, 2004 and 2005 for both January and March, as you can see from the graph below.

Certainly, this outbreak has the potential of beating early season severe weather records, or records for the geographical area that it hit. The National Weather Service in Kansas City, Missourti points out:

A significant tornado outbreak occurred over portions of eastern Kansas and western Missouri on March 12, 2006. In addition to the fourteen tornado touchdowns detailed below, 201 reports of large hail and/or damaging winds were also received from virtually every county in the Pleasant Hill service area. To put the March 12 outbreak into perspective, an average severe weather season in our local area brings approximately 11 tornadoes, and around 400 reports of hail and/or wind to the local region.

Just some things to consider as we move into what might be a record severe season. After all, it's only March!

Report a Typo