How Rare Is To Have East Coast Tornadoes In February?

Tornado damage in Waverly, Virginia Thursday.
Photo from AP.  

It definitely seemed incredible strange, amid the tragedy, to have so many tornadoes sweep up and down the East Coast in the past week.

On Wednesday and early Thursday. tornadoes along the East Coast struck as far north as Pennsylvania, and severe thunderstorms with winds as high as 83 mph crept all the way north into Massachusetts.

Overall, and sadly, the tornadoes a few days ago killed nine people nationwide. 

This kind of thing happens every once in awhile on the East Coast in the late spring and summer, But February? Isn't that the season for nor'easter blizzards, not East Coast tornadoes?

Yep, and you're right if you think the East Coast tornado outbreak a few days ago was really rare for the season. But generally speaking, it's not unheard of for February.

There were of course some records set.  Pennsylvania has gotten a few rare, rather weak February tornadoes before. But a destructive EF-2 tornado in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Wednesday was the most intense (125 mph) widest (400 yards) and longest tracked (4.7 miles) of any recorded February tornado in Pennsylania.

This tornado also trashed about 50 buildings and caused about $8 million in damage, which surely is the most destructive February tornado in Pennsylvania.

The EF-3 tornado around Appomattox, Virginia Wednesday was that state's first EF-3 tornado since the epic twister outbreak of April, 2011. It was also likely the first EF-3 tornado to strike the state in February.

The tornado in Appomattox, and a separate one in Waverly, Virginia unfortunately killed four people. These are the first recorded deaths from February tornadoes in Virginia. 

You can see the huge Appomattox tornado and here its scary roar in the video at the bottom of this post

I'm batting around all those "EF" category tornado figures. It's known as the Enhanced Fujita scale and is metric for how strong tornadoes are. They range from EF-0 twister, which have winds of "only" 65-85 mph to EF-5 monster tornadoes that have winds in excess of 200 mph.

Up in New England, the National Weather Service felt compelled to issue severe thunderstorm watches late Wednesday. For good reason, as they did eventually develop. The National Weather Service says severe thunderstorm watches in southern New England are. on average, a once in 25 year event.

The New England storm watches were not the earliest in the season on record. There were severe storm watches on January 14, 1992 and January 19, 1996, says the Boston regional office of the National Weather Service.

Yellow, orange and dark green shades on ths map indicate
where NOAA's Storm Predicton Center expected
severe weather Wednesday and early Thursday. Black
dots represent actual reports of severe storms andt
tornadoes. Definitely an accurate forecast.  

Still, this was likely the most widespread severe thunderstorm event on record in southern New England for February, given the multitude of storm damage reports.

The very destructive tornado that hit Pensacola, Florida was an EF3. It was the second EF3 to hit Escambia County in northwestern Florida within an eight day period. Previous to that, there had only been three EF3s in that county since 1950.

EF-3 tornadoes have winds of 135 to 165 mph, so they're pretty nasty.

I have to give kudos to NOAA's Storm Prediction Center. The areas they said would be under the highest risk of severe storms and tornadoes Tuesday and Wednesday ended up having the bulk of the worst storms.

As you can see by the map in this post, the areas the Storm Prediction Center predicted would be the most impacted were, in fact the hardest hit.

This year, tornado activity, and unfortunately, tornado deaths are off to a quick start. Winter is normally a relative lull in United States tornado activity, then things start to ramp up in March and get really busy in April, May and June.

As of February 25, the Storm Prediction Center has logged 125 reports of tornadoes, which is above average.

There's no way to tell if the busy start of the year for tornadoes portends a busy year. But we've had three slower than normal tornado seasons in a row through 2015, so it's just a matter of time before we get a destructive tornado year.

In the short term, there's a least some potential for a couple more tornadoes in the South Tuesday, but that forecast is definitely uncertain right now.

Here's the Appomattox, Virginia tornado on Wednesday:


Here's a time lapse of a severe storm sweeping into downtown Charlotte, North Carolina Wednesday: