Surprising End to February

What a weird way to end the month. Here in Alton, temps would swing from cold one week to warm the next. To give an idea, we had one week in the 50s and 60s, and the next week was back in the 40s. Then to make the end of the month even more interesting, let's throw in a bunch of tornadoes as well. Yes, you read that right, tornadoes.

February 27 was an interesting day. To start, the high was in the 60s, not your typical February weather. Add on the fact that the Storm Prediction Center convective outlooks had a moderate outlook just south of Alton. Here is the outlook for Feb. 27. This is later in the day, close to when the storms were starting up.

Although the chance for tornadoes was about 5% for Alton, the chance ramped up to 10% just south of the area. All the weather conditions were pointing to the storm going linear, which it did. With this type of system, straight line winds are generally the primary severe weather threat. Based on everything I had seen that day, I was even thinking "Oh, this will mostly be a straight line wind event here [Here being Alton]." The storm rolls in, it goes linear, and it drops tornadoes to the south here. Here is a radar loop of the storm. You'll have to click a few things to get this to run. For the date [Feb. 28, 2011], then click "Go!". (This storm took place after 7 pm CST, so it rolls to the next day in Zulu time). After you've done that, click on "Radar Composites" then "Radar Composites cent missvly", and you should be looking at the radar of this storm.

The SPC reports came in as straight line winds. [Reports Feb. 27 and Feb. 28] After damage surveys by the National Weather Service in St. Louis, MO, there have been confirmed tornadoes. Here is their damage survey data, with a nice map of the area. If you click on the blue dots on the map, you can pull up information on that event. If you want to make this event even more odd, just look at this report from the NWS St. Louis just a few days earlier. Like I said earlier, this was a really weird end to February.