Southeast Storm Chasers

April of 2011 wasn't kind to those in Alabama and the South as tornado after tornado caused destruction and ruin.  Fortunately the South, and more specifically Alabama, have seen this April be extremely quiet with ZERO reports of a tornado.  Excellent news for shell-shocked communities in the heart of the spring tornado season.

Some would say that the lack of April tornadoes in Alabama is extremely rare, and I would tend to agree with that statement.  But to see how true that statement was I decided to go to the Tornado History Project website and check out their extensive database containing tornado information from the year 1950 to the present.  Their data is obtained from the Storm Prediction Center's historical tornado database file, and while it may not be entirely accurate (especially for the earlier years as smaller tornadoes may have gone unreported), it is probably the most accurate database out there.

Since 1950, Alabama has had a total of 12 Aprils where no tornadoes were recorded.  The years are 1951, 1960, 1962, 1967, 1976, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1993, 2001, 2004, and presumably 2012.  That percentage comes out to 19% (12 out of 63), which is surprisingly high and very nearly represents a 1 in 5 chance of not having a tornado in the month of April.

While looking for the zero counts, I also noticed that many years only showed one tornado report in April.  Those years are 1952, 1954, 1956, 1959, 1965, 1966, 1972, 1981, 1988, 1989, 1992, 1997, and 2002.  13 Aprils out of 63 years (21%) had only one reported tornado.

In total, 40% of Aprils since 1950 have reported zero or one tornado.  That is a surprisingly high percentage of inactivity for it being the peak of the spring tornado season.  I think the main point to learn from these figures is that Alabama can definitely have long lulls in tornadic activity, even in the peak season.