Good Tuesday, everyone. We have another steamy temperature day taking shape across Kentucky, but changes are on the way. A series of cold fronts will finally start impacting the weather around here, leading to a cooler looking and feeling pattern. This should also give us a better threat for showers and storms.
Speaking of storms, much of the action today is isolated in our neck of the woods. The evening could bring a slightly greater chance for a storm or two, but most areas look to stay dry…
As a cold front sinks closer to the region from the northwest on Wednesday, a few rounds of showers and storms should be able to dive in from the west and northwest. This could bring strong to severe storms for some. Here’s the Severe Weather Outlook from the Storm Prediction Center…
That front won’t actually move in until later Thursday as scattered showers and thunderstorms continue. Cooler temps will move in behind that as we start the month of June. Another front will try to follow that up by late this weekend or early next week.
The overall trend showing up is for more of a trough to develop across the eastern half of the country. Check out the view on the European for the middle of next week…
Have a great day and take care.
I will have to cut my gr@ss today .
During the last few days of May 1917, tornadoes struck about a dozen states in the Southeast, Central Plains and Midwest. This included multiple F4s in western areas of both Tennessee and Kentucky on May 27.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May–June_1917_tornado_outbreak_sequence
We are now roughly at the time of year in which our area starts to see a reduction of a tornado threat.
More consistent and reliable weather records go back to about the 1880s, with observations before the 1880s being more spotty. In these records, March, April and May are the most dangerous months for tornadoes for our area (even if things have been relatively quiet this spring). After May, the twister threat declines. Records show there have been no tornadoes in Kentucky and Tennessee stronger than F3/EF3 from after May 27 until November (using the multiple F4s in KY and TN on May 27 1917 as a benchmark). Also, no Kentucky twisters stronger than F2/EF2 have happened from about mid-June until October. In fact, neither KY nor TN have had a single tornado fatality in July, at least in recorded history. Much of this information is from the book ‘Significant Tornadoes’ (by Tom Grazulis) and from NWS records. So regarding stronger tornadoes, we are about at a point where we might start to breathe a little sigh of relief… if not let down our guard completely.
While it may not be impossible for an EF4 to hit our area in July, climatology hints this would be quite rare. By summer, stronger tornadoes tend to shift away from us and towards the Great Lakes and the Northern Plains (among other reasons, following the northward summer retreat of the jet streams). The number of total tornadoes (including weaker ones) also drops significantly in our area by July.
There are of course other hazards during the summer months such as t-storms (including infrequent derechos) producing destructive straight line winds. Not to mention flash flooding, lightning strikes, and extreme heat/humidity. But thankfully, on average there are only occasional EF0-EF2 twisters.
The SPC has an exhaustive list of numerous parameters (Mesoscale Analysis) that comes into play when forecasting severe weather—and it is, fortunately, very difficult to get all of these ingredients to come together for tornado formation in this part of the world in the summer months.
Extremely rare events can still occur. I’m just glad most of the time, the SPC is accurate on forecasting moderate and high risk events within 24 hours of the onset.
It was not until roughly high school that I learned that tornadoes are mainly a spring-time threat in our area. Before that, I largely as-sumed that since summer has lots of t-storms, there must also be a good tornado risk. Glad that that’s one notion that could be tossed out the window 😉 .
Geez, tornadoes late yesterday into the overnight hours this morning in Indiana and Ohio. Nighttime photos via Dayton news websites seemed to show at least EF2 destruction to homes….upcoming daylight will better show the damage and help first responders. Some rescues were apparently in progress, not sure of any injuries at this early point.
Chris Bailey was on top of this outbreak as usual (via his Twitter page). Even on presumably his day off!
Yeah, that was quite an outbreak in both Indiana and Ohio yesterday. Mark do you remember the tornado outbreak in southwest Indiana back on June 2nd, 1990 ?
On 6/2/1990 I remember what was rated an F4 tornado hitting Bright, IN, Harrison, OH and WestChester, OH. Like the tornadoes that struck Dayton last night, this twister also hit after sunset making it that much more dangerous. It also made us very nervous that the storms would drift into Northern Kentucky and affect us but that did not happen.
At that time, June 2nd,1990 I was living in southwest Indiana and was just twenty miles south of an F4 tornado that took out 1/3 of a town called Petersburg, Indiana. I think now they call that area “Hoosier Alley.”
I have only read about June 2 1990, as at the time I was only a six year old in Morristown TN.
NWS Indianapolis has a nice article about this outbreak.
https://www.weather.gov/ind/june2_1990tor
I recall a few minor snows and seemingly scary t-storms during my very early youth, but the first really huge weather event to stick in my mind was the incredible March 13 Blizzard of 1993!
SE ridge is strong for so early in the season. Pushing all the weather to the North/West. We’ve been fortunate in Kentucky. No stifling heat (lots of placing in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and Virginia) setting all time May heat records. No crazy flooding or major outbreaks of severe weather.
It’s rare for a decent-sized metropolitan area to get hit by a tornado twice within a few days. Tulsa, OK and it’s proximity to Tornado Alley was hit by a couple of twisters just 5 days apart (05/20 and 05/25), yes just this past week.
In 1957, an April barrage of tornadoes affected the area when Tulsa was hit just 3 days apart, April 19 and 22. I was hoping to read about these, but NCDC’s Storm Data publication only goes back to 1959.
Of course, I will wait for the latest info, but top analogs I follow suggest more than a slight risk of severe weather for our region. This has borderline widespread written all over it.