Last night was the first “big” severe weather outbreak of the year. Several tornadoes across Missouri and Arkansas - a number of which were carrying the PDS [particularly dangerous situation] tag, and then a supercell in Mississippi that apparently produced a long-track tornado. Probably two other long-track tornadoes, one that went from Arkansas through Poplar Bluff, MO and then another that went across south central Missouri. The St. Louis area had at least 4 tornadoes - nothing that hit downtown proper, all in suburbs around - but 2 of those looked on radar to be really tightly wrapped, so we’ll see what the “official” rating is for them. [My usual rant on the EF system withheld for now.]
Latest report has 13 dead from last night’s storms. One of those was practically across the road from where one of my best friends live. They didn’t get hit by the tornado, but they have debris from stuff that got hit. [2nd close call for them in 3 years.]
Today? Mississippi and Alabama? It’s going to be bad. Like, really bad. Probably Easter Sunday, 2020 bad. SPC just put up a PDS tornado watch for Mississippi and a sliver of Louisiana, the show is going to kick off in a couple hours.
Looks like it should hit roughly 11pm-4am here. Not looking forward to that.
Watching today, as Easter Sunday 2020 wasn’t nothing, but not as bad as April 27 2011.
I was flying back to ATL that day. It was one of the scariest flights I’ve been on. Due to crosswinds the pilot had to do that crab thing to land where the plane is pointing perpendicular to the runway until straightening up at the last second. He had to abort the landing at the last second twice and go around. After the second failure, he said we could only try once more before going to another airport due to fuel concerns. Fortunately the 3rd time was the charm. I was staring out the window straight down the runway as we made the landing attempts.
5 Likes
maybe you should check easter “snuday” as that’s what was posted in the OP
1 Like
snu day or snu-snu day? Is that when you only get to do it once?
2 Likes
That’s a pretty large high risk area on the SPC outlook, and MS is already lit up with 6 tornado warned cells on it right now.
Does seem like the frequency of tornados is also increasing.
Here is the chart you want:
Tornadoes seem less directly tied to warming. The mechanisms are a complex interaction of a dry line coming from the central US, a high level jet stream, and moisture from the gulf. This convergence happens most often in the spring, where a warm gulf from the prior summer has already moderated and is coming off seasonal low points.
Not saying this isn’t 0, but my guess is warming seems like it might alter peak season by a few weeks on average or perhaps the location of activity more than the overall numbers.
1 Like
We’re outlooked for a high risk of severe weather today, and SPC is talking about a tornado outbreak. It’s been pointing toward this since today was Day 5 in the outlook, and I was in agreement with how things were trending then and how it was looking today.
But damn, I wish getting all the ingredients to come together right was a little more predictable in that section of the country instead of being a huge roll of the dice and crossing of lots of fingers and toes, because it’s not nearly as reliable as it should be.
We had freezing rain yesterday and thunder storms in the wee hours. 
ETA: And today it’s 21C and sunny.
Maybe not severe, but a bit of a TIL after seeing the special statement area on my weather app.