After A Horrendous Start, U.S. Tornado Season Fizzles

Tornado touching down in Iowa on Saturday. Despite this one,
the count of May tornadoes in the United States is well
below average, which is a rare bit of good weather news.

The United States has caught a break this month in one respect, anyway.

After a horrible March and April in which tornadoes killed no fewer than 53 people, and an April with a  way above average 350 or so tornadoes, things have quieted down markedly.

May and to a certain extent June are the peak tornado months, but May so far has been rather tame in that department.  

As of May 19, there had been just 47 tornadoes, with one death reported.  Since then, a few more tornadoes have spun up, but we are going to fall well short of the average of very roughly 300 May tornadoes.

Falling short in this regard is a good thing indeed!

Saturday was a relatively busy day with initial reports of 26 twisters to add to the 47 this month. But forecasts call for few if any real outbreaks of severe weather for the next several days.

The jet stream, which drives powerful parent storms that can spin off swarms of tornadoes this time of year, has retreated mostly north to near the U.S/Canadian border, robbing the Great Plains and Midwest of the proper conditions for a big outbreak.

Instead, there are regional outbreaks of rough weather caused by local conditions, such as a weak cold front interacting with humid air, or a clash of dry air and wet air in places like Texas.

One of the places that could conceivably get some severe weather is up her in northern New England late in the week, but even that prospect is quite iffy. Depending on the timing of a cold front which will push into some very warm, humid air that will be over us, some strong thunderstorms might develop.

But things will have to work out perfectly for that to happen, and in any event, a tornado is super unlikely with any strong storms we get toward the end of the week

Of course, tornadoes are not the only warm season weather hazard we need to worry about. Sluggish, slow moving storms that aren't favorable for tornadoes often dump boatloads of heavy rain, leading to flash flooding. We're still seeing plenty of that in various places, including Michigan, Florida and Nebraska, among others.

Also, NOAA says this year could see a very busy hurricane season because ocean and atmospheric conditions over the Atlantic favor a lot of tropical storm development in the coming several months.