Tornado And Hurricane Season

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http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/20/agency-record-slow-start-to-spring-severe-weather/?hpt=T2

The 2010 spring severe weather season is off to its slowest start on record, according to forecasters from the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

The agency, which is responsible for issuing forecasts for severe storms, releases daily forecasts that predict the level of severe weather and assigns it to three categories - slight, moderate and high.

Typically, severe storms occur most often in the United States during the months of April, May and June.

"It looks like we've gone the deepest into a year without our first MDT (moderate) or high risk," said Rich Thompson, a forecaster at the prediction center. "The previous latest date was March 21, 2005, so we're almost a month past that date."

The 2005 severe weather season got off to a slow start as well, but turned out to be a record-breaking year for severe weather and tornadoes.

Most of the tornadoes that occurred that year were associated with tropical storms and hurricanes that made landfall. The 2005 hurricane season was the worst on record, with 28 named storms, 15 hurricanes and seven major hurricanes –Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale.