I think there are historic aspects of the day yesterday ... certainly the monster storm of the day that everyone is talking about is pretty incredible. And like the 5/4/03 outbreak, it seemed like the entire state of Missouri had supercells covering it ... it was almost hard to find a spot WITHOUT a supercell at one point. Also, the early morning convection in such a cold environment has me fascinated ... I've never chased in 40 degree temps before - but I was certainly doing it yesterday.
Damage-wise it's hard to tell how this one ranks ... it takes a few days to really assimilate all the reports. ... To me, 5/4/03 was a stronger day from a chaser point of view, just because the tornadoes were highly visible and there were plenty of them during early afternoon. Like 5/4/03, yesterday's storms lasted well overnight, making them exceptionally frightning for folks living here. It's again the talk of the town today, and people are taking the weather seriously.
Yesterday during the afternoon hours there were PLENTY of rotating supercells, but for whatever reason they were not inclined to produce tornadoes unless you were in Sedalia or Lawrence in the early a.m. After dark the storms became highly tornadic, but I'm not inclined to chase Missouri after dark ... you can barely get me to do it when there's light.
I think that due to the way information streams in near real-time these days, while we are going through a huge event like yesterday it seems like everything is breaking loose and we are living through history in the making ... but when you look back, there have been several similar - and more intense - events in years past. Yesterday may have been historic in some respects, but definitely not the top event in every respect.
