A late start for tornadoes, what about the rest of summer?

Better late than never? That certainly applies to our tardy spring but not to the delay of tornado season in Wisconsin. The first tornado of 2014 touched down shortly before 11pm Monday night (June 16th) with 5 more arriving before 12:30am.

A half dozen tornadoes in only a few hours is quite a grand opening by itself. But adding to the danger was the late night arrival and intensity of the twisters. Half of them carried a strong EF2 or EF3 rating.

Thankfully, adequate warning times from the National Weather Service combined with a little luck helped avoid any fatalities.

Making it half way through June before dealing with our first tornado is pretty impressive. In fact this was the sixth latest start to the tornado season.

And while the sample is small, the late start of previous years indicates we may see less than 23 tornadoes, the annual average for the state.

Latest starts to tornado season and the final count.

Another caveat to keep in mind while looking at this trend is that the years of 1950-1952 came before a meteorologist even knew what a “hook echo” on radar meant. So it is very likely that smaller tornadoes could have been missed in the early years.

It’s impossible to know with any certainty if we’ll have a below normal year for tornadoes, but the trend does look good for the overall number. We can partially thank our long winter and cool spring for the delay. Our weather gets much more active after vegetation “greens up” which occurred a little later than usual this May.

The halfway point in Wisconsin’s tornado season occurs in the last week of June. We can only hope the second half is as quiet as the first.