We're Exiting a Quiet May Into a More Active June

May was incredibly quiet nationwide, but June could be much busier!

If there is one way to describe May so far, it’d be in like a lion (May 2 and 4 were very active), hibernating like a bear in the middle, and perhaps storming out like an elephant (this weekend).

One of the chief reasons we’ve had a quiet middle part of the month has been repeated cold fronts which have limited moisture quality, leading to dry/outflow driven storms with a lot of dust, resembling the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Typically, storms on the plains aren’t meant to be dust machines and that’s usually a sign the season isn’t that active yet.

A graph of the yearly tornado count (red) compared to the average (black) and individual years (the other colors).

In fact, after starting early and often and east, tornado season has taken a big slumber since the early part of May with us beginning to flirt dangerously with crossing to below average on the year for the tornado count. By most any measure, the Plains storm season has been well below average in terms of production.

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