Day 151: 2010 Tornado Deficit
VORTEX II was once again forced to call a down day because the atmosphere just wasn’t willing to cooperate. Fortunately for the crew, tomorrow appears to hold more promise for thunderstorms in their general area.
So, with all these down days recently, I wondered how the 2010 tornado season has compared to the tornado seasons of years past. I’ve previously mentioned that 2010 has been a below normal year for tornadoes through the first three months of the year. Now that another (almost) 2 months have passed, and VORTEX II has begun, where do things stand now?
In the image above (which I’ve described previously here), the average over the last five years is marked in grey, and actual events for this year are plotted in red. As you can see, we are still nearly 200 tornadoes below the average over the last five years. This is not a good sign for the VORTEX II crew. Here’s to hoping the next few days and weeks are better for researchers.
About Patrick
Patrick Marsh is a Ph.D. student at the University of Oklahoma's School of Meteorology. He earned a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and Physics (cum laude) from the University of Arkansas in 2005 and a Masters of Science in Meteorology in 2007. In addition to working on his doctorate, Patrick serves as the National Severe Storms Laboratory Liaison to the Hazardous Weather Testbed where his research interests lie in working with operational forecasters, data mining, data visualization, and all things high-impact weather. For more about Patrick's work, check out his complete CV!
Connect with Patrick!