A violent tornado tore through central Iowa on Tuesday causing destruction in the town of Greenfield. Drone video showed several structures that were leveled and residents working to find storm victims.
May 2024 weather goes down in the history books as stormy, destructive and deadly, according to the NOAA monthly climate assessment.
The nation suffered two disasters costing at least $1 billion in May. The first was the May 6-9 tornado outbreak. The second was the deadly derecho that traveled from Texas to Louisiana and killed seven.
That brings the 2024 total of billion-dollar disasters up to 11 so far. More than half of those occurred in spring. That total is under-pacing the same period last year, which set the record for the number of billion-dollar disasters. January through June of 2023 saw 13 billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. and one in the U.S. territory of Guam.
NOAA: US SEES RECORD NUMBER OF BILLION-DOLLAR WEATHER, CLIMATE DISASTERS IN 2023
Confirmed billion dollar weather and climate disasters across the country through May 2024.
(NOAA NCEI / NOAA)
Second-most active May for severe weather in 20 years
Tornadoes
Loss of life and property set the tone for May. Twenty-three states from South Dakota to Florida had at least one tornado during the month. Two powerful EF-4 tornadoes ravaged Iowa and Oklahoma.
The Greenfield, Iowa, tornado killed five on May 21, making it the deadliest tornado of the year, thus far. An EF-4 twister on May 6 destroyed much of Barnsdall and Bartlesville in Oklahoma and killed one person.
The NWS received more than 6,100 severe weather reports, including 475 tornadoes. That is a 70% uptick in tornadoes compared to an average May. Only May 2011 saw more severe weather reports – 6,763 – in the 20 years of recordkeeping.
MAY FINISHING AS SECOND-MOST ACTIVE FOR SEVERE WEATHER WITH OVER 6,100 STORM REPORTS
Storm trackers get a closeup of the tornado in Corning, Iowa to see how much debris is being thrown around.
One of those tornado reports was a rare anticyclonic tornado in Tillman County, Oklahoma, on May 1. The vast majority of tornadoes spin counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. Only 2% of tornadoes have a backward, clockwise spin.
The NWS issued the first ever Tornado Emergency for Michigan on May 2.
Derechos
The hurricane-force winds of the derecho that left 7 dead also left more than a million customers without power from the Houston Metro area into Louisiana on May 16. The extreme gusts blew out skyscraper windows in downtown Houston. A second derecho blasted Kansas just days later with 100-mph winds.
HURRICANE-FORCE WINDS TOPPLE BUDDING DREAM HOME LIKE POPSICLE STICKS DURING HOUSTON DERECHO
Workers clean up debris downtown on Monday, May 20, 2024, in Houston. The city closed off streets in a six-block exclusion zone downtown, from McKinney to Polk and from Smith to Travis, as workers continued to clean up broken glass from downtown streets and windows.
(Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle / Getty Images)
Hail
The NWS issued its first warning for DVD sized-hail – 5 inches in diameter – in Hockley County, Texas, on May 28. The service had never before issued a warning for hail that big.
Baseball sized-hail battered the Denver Metro area on May 30. This was the largest hail the county had seen in 35 years. The huge size prompted the NWS to issue a Destructive Severe Thunderstorm Warning. The baseballs fell for almost an hour, according to FOX 31 Denver.
‘MONSTER’-SIZED HAILSTONE COULD SHATTER TEXAS RECORD, NEAR WORLD RECORD
Large hailstones fall in Denver on May 30, 2024.
(@Quidnunciac / X / FOX Weather)
Life-threatening floods
An unusual late-season Kona Low drenched portions of Hawaii between May 15 and 17. That is the usual start to the dry season. The governor signed an emergency proclamation after some cities saw a foot of rain.
In the first week of May, flooding after heavy rain across Harris and Bosque counties in Texas killed one person and triggered more than 200 rescues by first responders.
A home in River Plantation is seen with its lights on in flood water, Friday, May 3, 2024, in Conroe, Texas. (Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
North of Nashville, Tennessee, 9 inches of rain between May 8 and 9 closed schools and prompted flash flood emergencies and water rescues.
Kentucky, Tennessee and Rhode Island had their sixth-wettest May. The wet May finished up the third-wettest spring on record for Rhode Island, where the Ocean State has had the second-wettest year-to-date. For Iowa and Wisconsin, May 2024 was the fourth-wettest. The year-to-date rainfall ranked ninth in the 130 years of recordkeeping for the contiguous U.S.
Heat
Florida just had the warmest May on record while Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia had their second-warmest. Twenty-one other states experienced top-five-warmest springs.
For January through May, the continental U.S. ranked fifth-warmest on record. Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine recorded their second-warmest. Sixteen more states had their top-five-warmest year-to-date.
Meanwhile, Bethel, King Salmon, Kodiak and St. Paul in Alaska recorded their coolest May in more than a decade.
What does June have in store?
NOAA’s monthly outlooks have the Western half of the country staying warm. The Lower Mississippi Valley to the central Rockies should see above normal rain while drought persists in the Southwest, Florida, Hawaii and the northern tier of states.
Significant wildfire potential runs high across dry areas of the Southwest and Florida.