Oklahoma likely to set a record for latest start ever to tornado season

TULSA — With no severe weather expected in the next couple of days, it appears Oklahoma is about to set a new record for the latest start to tornado season since modern records have been kept.

“We seem like we will break the state record for the slowest start to the tornado season,” according to Steve Piltz, Meteorologist-in-Charge at the Tulsa office of the National Weather Service.

He added that it’s not as unusual to go this far into April without a tornado in northeast Oklahoma, but for the state in general it’s extremely rare.

Unprecedented, in fact.

The record as of this writing is April 26th, 1962.

Parts of the state set another record this April as well - the most days with temperatures below freezing.

As Piltz pointed out, late cold snaps don’t mitigate the danger from tornadoes, because weather patterns can change quickly in Oklahoma.

“You just look back to 2013, where we had snow in northeast Oklahoma in early May,” he told KRMG, “and that was the month that then led to the El Reno tornado, which could be classified as one of the worst in the history of the tornado records.”

That storm reportedly marked the first time in recorded history that storm chasers were killed by a tornado.