2008 Tornado Season - well above average

I took a look this morning at the 2008 preliminary tornado reports and the really active season we started off with has continued. Of course the Feb. 5-6 "Super Tuesday" outbreak is the main highlight of the season but I am impressed that the pattern has stayed so active. Below is a graph that has the number of reported tornadoes (y-axis) plotted against date (x-axis). Compare this year to recent years and a 10-year average. This data is provided by the SPC.


So far Missouri leads with 112 reports of tornadoes, with Mississippi following with 109 and Arkansas with 89. Just as a side note, Mississippi isn't considered to be in the traditional tornado alley, yet it leads historically in the number of deaths per state.

Finally, the five most active days, as far as severe weather reports are concerned are as follows (source: SPC):

1	02/05/08	527
2	05/10/08	467
3	01/07/08	333
4	03/04/08	331
5	01/29/08	309

Notice how four of these dates are actually before or during the very early part of "thunderstorm season".