UPDATE: Sigh. I didn't think it had to be said, but per a Comment it obviously does. I am not "hoping" for massive deaths and injuries from the severe weather. However, I'm not going to pretend (as some do) that I don't like photographing severe weather. What I am particularly looking forward to that I didn't mention below is doing the Storm Spotting (I am a certified Skywarn Spotter) that will allow that Commenter's friends & family to be forewarned ahead of time and avoid injury.

As a weather photographer and local storm chaser in Central Pennsylvania I'm hoping for a better (meaning stormier) severe weather season for 2010, as are my storm-chasing cronies Henry "Madman" Margusity & Ron "R-Factor" Shawley. The truth is, it couldn't be much worse (calmer) than 2009. The so-called "Year Without A Summer" kept temperatures cool and storms suppressed. That was particularly painful for Pennsylvania storm chasers since the previous 4 years were above average, with 2007 being a banner year. Here's a look at the past nine years of spotter reports from SPC statistics:

Note that, although 2007 was a great year for severe weather reports in general, we haven't had more than 10 tornadoes reported in the state since the 2001-2005 era. Hail reports, however, have increased in the past few years, stronger last year than 2000-2005 due to the abundant cool air aloft, I suspect.

The sparsity of severe weather last year compared to 2007 is easy to see (note especially the big hole over Central PA last year):

To add insult to injury here in State College, the best storm waited until late August to thrill us with frequent lightning (not something normally seen around here):

Of course, Ron got lucky on May 28th.

Pennsylvania Severe Weather Averages (Climatology):

Speaking of that time of year, I like to joke that our severe weather season in Central Pennsylvania is May 29th - June 2nd. That's because of the blockbuster week from my first Spring here in 1998 in which we had several massive thunderstorms including one with a tornado here in Centre County (I'll have to pull the archives of that event and post them here, it was the most incredible season I have seen in my 13 years here). But in all seriousness, there is something to that. According to the SPC Radar Site Climatology Page, our season generally ramps up in early May, peaks once around June 1st and again around July 4th; by the end of August we're pretty much done. (Because of our northern latitude, we do have a different season than Tornado Alley).

I found out something interesting though when looking at the last few years... if you count the number of "severe weather days" where at least one storm report was filed in the state, it is almost exactly the same (within one day) in 2007, 2008 and 2009. I guess that means that while we always have about 48 days per season where the West/Central Pennsylvania Storm Chasers group on Facebook might be on alert, some days turn out many more reports than others.

Below is a plot of all significant severe weather reports and tornado tracks in Pennsylvania from 1980-2006. You'll note that, while the entire state has pretty good coverage, the central part of the state has more sparse reports than the west and east. That's easy to explain, we are suffering from being in the "dead zone" that exists just east of the Appalachian chain; storms decrease in strength when moving down the mountains into Central PA (but are able to re-fire over the eastern part of the state due to sufficient daytime heating and coastal moisture).

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