Ticker for May 5, 2004

                
MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ...
May 5, 2004        May 5, 2004        May 5, 2004        May 5, 2004


The Purring, Lovable Side of May 3rd

May 3rd has etched its place in Oklahoma history because of the
frightening and powerful outbreak of tornadoes in 1999.  Well,
Monday America saw a different performance from May 3rd, and
in some respects this week's version was more unusual than that
of 1999.

On May 3rd, 2004, there were zero reports of severe weather in the
United States.  Zero.  No large hailstones.  No winds greater than
fifty knots.  And certainly no tornadoes.

Folks, that's rare for early May.

In fact, the Storm Prediction Center's John Hart (from whom this
information was plagiarized by a decreasingly creative Ticker staff)
put some numbers on just how rare.  It turns out that this year's
May 3rd is one of only five no-severe days since to happen in the
last five days of April or the first five days of May. There are
a lot of "five"s and "day"s running around in that last sentence,
so we'll do the math: there are 150 such days in the dataset.

By the way, May 3rd, 1999 did not finish among the group's top five
days in terms of number of severe reports.