Are you ready for spring weather?

PRINCETON — With the worst of the winter storms hopefully behind Bureau County for the season, residents can turn their thoughts to severe weather patterns which typically occur in the spring and summer months.

On Monday, Kris Donarski, coordinator of the Bureau County Emergency Services and Disaster Agency, said the spring and summer months bring severe weather concerns like thunderstorms, flooding and tornadoes. Complacency, when it comes to the weather, is not a good thing, she said.

Residents need to be proactive and take advantage of the wealth of safety preparedness information available through the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) Web site, as well as other sites like the American Red Cross and the National Weather Service.
Looking at the tornado season, Donarski said the majority of tornadoes in Illinois happen between April 1 and June 30, between the hours of 3 and 10 p.m. However, tornadoes can happen in any month of the year and at any time of the day or night, she said.

According to IEMA records, Illinois has an average of 43 tornadoes each year, with 52 tornadoes reported during 2009. Those tornadoes caused more than $25 million in damage and 27 injuries. As far as other severe weather concerns, lightning strikes have caused 27 deaths in Illinois since 1990, and floods have killed 23 people in Illinois since 1995, with four of those deaths occurring in 2009.

On Monday, meteorologist Anthony Peoples with WQAD News 8 said the 2010 year has been fairly quiet so far for tornado activity. There was only one reported tornado in the United States in February, and that was a weak twister in California which lasted only about three minutes. The nation’s three-year average is 78 tornadoes in February, he said.
Overall, last year’s tornado activity was a bit below average nationwide, Peoples added. From March 2009 to August 2009, there were 990 reported tornadoes in the United States, compared to the three-year average for that time period of 1,040.

Concerning flooding, Peoples said the local rivers will definitely rise some from this winter’s melting snow. However, the amount of snowfall during a winter does not determine the amount of flooding in the spring.