Why the number of confirmed tornadoes from April 26-28 will likely rise

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish explains what goes into the process of officially counting tornadoes, including all the ones in the central U.S. this past weekend.

Transcript

00:00 Parts of the Plains and the Heartland

00:02 are in the very early stages of

00:04 tornado recovery after last weekend's

00:06 outbreak and meteorologist Jeff Cornish

00:08 takes a look at the tornado count

00:11 as storm surveys continue.

00:14 Over the first time since the month of

00:19 January we have stepped back up and now

00:22 we have a near normal and actually

00:24 slightly above average tornado

00:25 count for the year.

00:27 Unfortunately,

00:27 the weekend outbreak took us all

00:29 the way back up above average after

00:31 being below average and we've had

00:33 484 tornado reports this year.

00:35 On average, we'd be around 480

00:37 by this point on the calendar.

00:39 Now you can see that there have

00:41 been over 100 confirmed tornadoes,

00:43 and this number is going to continue

00:45 to rise in a significant way.

00:47 We've had our first EF4 tornado in

00:49 over a year that was in Oklahoma,

00:51 and the trend will be that we likely

00:53 see the relatively weaker tornadoes

00:55 that are still very dangerous in

00:57 the first place. The tally there of

00:59 the zeros and the F1's will likely

01:01 increase most as we move forward.

01:03 As more storm surveys are completed,

01:05 they tend to prioritize the higher

01:07 end tornadoes, which is not surprising.

01:09 And again, we've had an EF4 for the

01:11 first time in over a year.

01:13 Taking a look specifically at the EF4

01:15 tornado that was confirmed and surveyed.

01:17 This traveled 27 miles from around

01:19 Marietta, OK to Dixon, OK,

01:21 and it's been a very active storm

01:23 survey. We've had a lot of

01:25 surveys around Marietta, OK to Dixon, OK.

01:27 This was responsible for one of the

01:29 fatalities over the weekend, sadly.

01:31 It was on the ground for about

01:33 24 minutes, and it had

01:35 a 900-yard-wide

01:37 path, so it was as wide as

01:39 nine football fields, and it

01:41 traveled 27 miles forward.

01:43 So some may wonder, why does it

01:45 take so long to actually do these surveys?

01:47 Well, the National Weather Service

01:49 has to travel, in some cases, a couple

01:51 of hours from their home

01:53 bases to get to some of

01:55 these locations, if it's near the fringe of their coverage

01:57 area, and they are very, very,

01:59 very detailed. I've been on several

02:01 surveys as somebody working

02:03 in local TV with National

02:05 Weather Service officials, and they are

02:07 extraordinarily detailed in how

02:09 they rate the damage and look at types of building

02:11 construction, types of wood and trees

02:13 and hardwood versus softwood, and then

02:15 they plot all the data and do the analysis.

02:17 Thanks.

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