March is the Cruelest Month

There’s a cold front pushing its way south today, and disaster-relief people–police, fire, emergency-management agencies and so forth–are at the ready.  It’s a bad day for tornadoes.

And it’s coming after a bad month.  NOAA says Feburary was way above the average of the last three years.

Preliminary numbers for February:
–71 tornadoes nationally, compared to an average of 10 over the last three years.
–Three tornadoes that caused deaths.  In the previous three years, there had been no tornado deaths from February tornadoes.

January, on the other hand, was average:
–29 tornadoes nationally, compared to 28 on average.  (Previous years varied widely, from 48 to 3.)
–1 that caused deaths. 

Geographically, most of the trouble was right where it’s expected in winter–Florida and along the Gulf coast.

Today is considered the start of spring by meteorologists, since weather patterns begin to shift before the equinox on the 20th.  As warmth builds from the south, tornadoes are now more likely in the southern plains and mid-South.

There’s more at NOAA’s STORM PREDICTION CENTER in Norman, Okla. 

If you’re in the path of the storms, we’re pulling for you.