It certainly has been a wild — and deadly — few weeks for weather.
Since the first and 23rd of May, 340 tornadoes have spun up across the United States, mostly in a swath of territory stretching from Texas up through the nation’s midsection, according to preliminary reports from the National Weather Service. Compare that to an average of 276 tornadoes for the entire month.
The past week has brought particularly severe weather, with violent, hail-bearing thunderstorms spawning 206 tornadoes. These include an outbreak on May 22 in Missouri, where one twister near Joplin killed three people, and another ripped through Jefferson City, the state capitol.
Meanwhile, along Colorado’s Front Range where I live, the weather has been more characteristic of the Norwegian Arctic in April than this part of the country in late May.
Snow fell here on May 21, with three inches accumulating on my deck. And Denver managed to reach a high of only 39 degrees — the coldest high temperature for the date in 128 years of record keeping.
