Scheduling the chase ?

[Amos Magliocco]

This is a link to a paper called Climatological Estimates of Local Daily Tornado Probability for the United States, co-authored by Brooks, Doswell, and Kay, which appeared in the August 2003 issue of Weather and Forecasting.

In the article, the writers present findings that suggest a definite tornado probability peak at Lubbock Texas centered on or near the last few days of May, and with the least amount of variation of any single location they examined. The graph is figure C on page 635.

They write:

"The least variable season is found in the Texas Panhandle (Fig 10), with a trimmed standard deviation of less than 10 days. Put another way, there is approximately a 70% chance of the maximum tornado season occuring in a 20 day window in the Texas Panhandle (635-6).

It doesn't mean that the Panhandle sees the most tornadoes, but the data suggest that the best chance of the tornado climo peak occurring within the narrowest range of time is there. In other words, if you can take vacation during those twenty days, there's a good chance that you'll be out and about when the Panhandle reaches her tornado climo peak. Any single given year could suck, of course. That's the danger of chasing by climo.