I am the Meteorologist in Charge of the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Norman, Oklahoma, which serves central Oklahoma and northwestern Texas. The Norman Forecast Office is one of 121 offices strategically placed across the country. These offices are the Nation s first line of defense for all manner of extreme weather and flash-flood events. The United States is the most weather hazard prone Nation on earth. Over 1,000 tornadoes occur each year.
Tornadoes can occur in every state in the United States, on any day of the year, and at any hour.
They are most common across the south and middle part of the country, east of the Rocky Mountains and west of the Appalachian Mountains. Tornado season begins in late winter or early spring in the South and moves northward. Tornadoes are most frequent during the spring and summer, while a secondary maximum occurs in the fall. My comments today are tempered by thoughts of the May 3 rd tornado outbreak that killed 42 people and injured 795 in Oklahoma alone. On that day, the warning program worked very well.