Yesterday's Tornado Outbreak Was Bad But Could Have Been A Lot Worse

Another deadly day in the Midwest:

Violent storms with winds of more than 150 mph slammed into a chunk of the central U.S. overnight, killing at least 13 people in three states, flattening homes, crushing cars and ripping apart a rural Arkansas fire station.

The high-powered storms arrived Tuesday night and early Wednesday, just days after a massive tornado tore up the southwest Missouri city of Joplin and killed 122 people.

The latest storms killed at least eight people in Oklahoma and two in Kansas before trekking east into Arkansas to claim three more lives.

I watched the first few hours of this develop and for awhile it looked like the Oklahoma City Metro area was going to get slammed. A very large long-track tornado skirted the Northwest suburbs and just missed my cousin's home in Edmond. She rode it out in a neighbor's underground storm shelter and could hear the roar and feel the rumble of the huge tornado as it passed very near by.

Other storms fired up further south and one tornado appeared to be following the same route as the May 3rd, 1999 tornado that devastated Moore, OK and several other communities like Bridge Creek. That storm did significant damage in Goldsby, OK but lifted before it hit the most densely populated areas of Southern Oklahoma City. Through there was damage and death, we didn't see a tornado go through a major population center like we did in Joplin or Tuscaloosa.

In an average year the U.S. experiences 24 tornadoes that result in fatalities.  This year there have been 53.  An average year sees 6 EF5 tornadoes.  So far in 2011 we've seen 4, including the Joplin storm that was raised to EF5 after further analysis yesterday.

Today could be another bad day further east with tornadoes already reported on the ground at this early hour.