Stats and Tornado Map From Week-Long Outbreak

Here is a look at some statistics from what is soon to be a week-long severe weather outbreak** in the Plains. Over 1,300 spotter reports and over 1,500 warnings have been issued. And with AccuWeather.com Professional's Joe Bastardi [BIO] (PRO) saying an outbreak later this week could "rival 1985" in the Northeast (see his blog for more) makes me think that this could indeed be a very historic May for severe weather.

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The "Parkersburg" tornado (which essentially destroyed that Iowa town) is projected to be "Greater then EF-3" based on the damage that the NWS has surveyed so far, and certainly from what I've seen on the news I would guess EF4 or possibly EF5... Some of the damage is reminiscent of Greensburg's F5 (see Categories / Greensburg Tornado at right).

I didn't have time to research previous years' outbreaks but it would seem this would rank pretty high. This now officially blows away any previous outbreak this year (although the 2-day outbreaks in January and February that I mentioned Saturday were more impressive than any 2-day period within this one).

**Deciding on what to call an "outbreak" is somewhat up to the interpreter, but I usually say that consecutive days in the same general area with at least 25 severe weather reports or 10 tornadoes is what defines one. In that case, today is the 7th day. Almost all of the reports (though not 100% of them) have been in the Plains. If you take a map and plot the tornado report locations with increasing brightness of red, you get the map below. Note that a few limited areas in Kansas (including the three bright red reports from yesterday - reports from TX, IL & IN on Tuesday 5/27 are not included) were hit on multiple days.

*Warning numbers are composited from daily numbers. Due to Z-time, warning numbers could be polluted by previous day or may not contain reports after 00Z. Storm Report numbers are correct because they are 12Z-12Z.