Severe Weather Outlook for the next 10 days:

Hey Chasers and Blog followers,

UPDATE 4/20/11:
After yesterdays powerful system and some updates to previous days, the official April '11 tornado report count is 481!!! 63 more tornado reports this month will break the old record of 543 in May '03. Again this is freaking insane considering the average number from April is around 150 reports historically!!! Stay tuned for more.

What a record breaking weekend for severe weather across the much of the central and southern portions of the country! All statistics, overinflation, and validity of every report aside, This past weekends three day severe weather event (tornado outbreaks) will likely go down in the history books as one of the most if not the most significant 3 day tornado outbreaks in history (even with the inflation of reports)and it has already gone down as the most deadly 3 day outbreak in history with 45 recorded deaths thus far. A three day running total of 267 tornado reports across 15 states and that number is still climbing. Here is an updated map from SPC of where we sit this year so far with Tornadoes:



That 501 total is after multiplying by 0.85 to address over counting (SPC also stresses this is raw data, subject to change). Total number of reports in 2011 thus far is 589. It is still early with 12 days left, but we are on our way to the most active Tornado month on record. As of 4/17/11 the April tornado report count was 371. After looking through various references, May 2003 was single most active tornado month on record at 543 reports.

I bring this point up because I believe there is a very real chance of breking this record when looking at the 10 day long range model output and that. Starting tomorrow, I count 4 upper level disturbances that will make their way across the heart of the country: 4/19/11, 4/22/11, 4/25/11, 4/27/11 each with significant potential to add to the April tornado total.






What I find fascinating is that each one of these upper level systems is following a simliar track off the Southern Rockies and then pushing NE across the Central Plains into the Central Midwest. Each system's upper level trough goes negatively tilted and has attendant surface Lows, fronts, rich moisture advection. I'll leave the stats/details/model output for another post. I know this pattern starts to become the norm as we get into May, but the fact that we have had such an active April already, the notion of breaking this record is something worth watching.

We are all witnessing weather history.

Dan aka Squall Line