United States

Slow Severe Weather Season vs. Big Hail, Tornado Anniversaries

April 12, 2010; 11:49 AM

The 2010 severe weather season seems to still be holding back; to date, we have only had 88 tornadoes, even lower than last year's historically low tornado season.

And it's not just tornadoes - the stats are staggeringly low for total severe weather reports January through March:

2010: 713
2009: 2,409
2008: 4,540
2007: 2,230
2006: 3,354

This weekend was the 1-year anniversary of the 2009 "Good Friday" Tornado Outbreak. It was actually a 2-day outbreak starting on Thursday around the state of Arkansas and moving east into the Carolinas. Before it was all said and done, 112 tornadoes had been reported (along with 221 spotter reports of wind and 435 of hail). Below is a combined storm report map for the two days. I also created a combined morning forecast maps from the SPC, which showed a huge "Slight Risk" area with two Moderate areas (a small High Risk area was added late on Friday, thanks Zack for the note).

One of the biggest tornadoes was the Mena, Arkansas twister. You can read more about it on the NWS's April 9th Severe Weather Report, and see photos from the storm on our Photo Gallery. Additional links for other tornadoes, and more photos can be found in my blog entry detailng the storm surveys for the tornadoes or the WikiPedia Entry.

Although no more tornadoes occurred, severe weather continued for two days in the South.

Another anniversary of note (thanks to blog reader Mike for pointing this out) is the costliest hailstorm in United States history. On April 10, 2001 a supercell thunderstorm dropped large hail for 245 miles along the I-70 corridor through Missouri and southern Illinois, causing $1.5 billion in damage. The storm, with hail to 4.5 inches in diameter (softball-sized) according to storm reports, damaged over 65,000 cars and 100,000 homes.

You can see photos from the storm (there were tornadoes too) on our Photo Gallery, and read more from the National Weather Service at these links:

- Raw Storm Reports From April 10th
- NWS Initial Report On The Storm
- NWS Official Report "The April 10, 2001 Historic Hailstorm and Supercell"
- "THE HISTORIC MISSOURI-ILLINOIS HIGH PRECIPITATION SUPERCELL OF 10 APRIL 2001" [PDF]

UPDATE: This blog is mentioned in today's "At This Moment" segment which airs on AccuWeather.com and AccuWeather.com TV:

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AccuWeather, Inc. or AccuWeather.com