A SLOW SEVERE SEASON....

It's never a bad thing to have a slow severe weather season... the only unfortunate side effect is the lack of heavy rains that usually accompany those strong storms. The serious lack of widespread, organized rains coming through has led to the continued drought.

However, severe weather season has been rather slow across the country. The Storm Prediction Center came out with some stats for May, one of the busier months (typically) for severe weather.

The SPC also said, "Thus far, only eight EF2+ tornadoes have been confirmed in May 2021. If no additional significant tornadoes are added, this would be the 5th fewest May significant tornadoes in recorded history (1950-present)."

May had the 8th fewest Tornado Watches issued since 1970. Tornado reports were near normal for May, but severe thunderstorm reports were below normal:

And you can see a lot of those reports are not in my local area... only a handful between Iowa and Illinois.

In terms of warnings in Iowa, 2021 has seen the fewest warnings to-date (as of June 13th) on record at 23.

The second least behind this year is 52 warnings in 1992 (over double what we have seen in '21).

For Illinois (a larger state) the ranking is 6th least on record... but still running at the bottom of the pack with 123 warnings so far.

The National Weather Service in the Quad Cities recently issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning (on Friday) but went through the ENTIRE month of May without issuing a single warnings (tornado, flash flood, severe thunderstorm). The last time that happened was 1992.

June is typically the peak of severe weather season - especially for tornadoes - in this area. Here's a look at the probabilities for June 13th for all types of severe weather (wind, hail, tornadoes):

However, we won't even have a chance for rain until Thursday/Friday of this week. Right now we have very dry air in place leading to hot (but bearable) and calm conditions.

Humidity is low with dew points that will be in the 40s and 50s through Wednesday:

As a result there will be little to no rain this week. It will still be pretty warm with temperatures in the 80s and 90s.

There will be the chance for showers and storms late Thursday into Friday as a cold front moves through.

The timing and intensity will change as we get closer so it's hard to get into specifics right now... But there are some signs that by the end of the month we get into a more active pattern around here, which would be great.

Here's the outlook for June 21-27:

Enjoy the dry, less humid days while we've got em!

RK