With all the time I have been spending on the road, I believe I have gotten tractor-seat butt. The team's most recent tour brought us through several states in the midwest with emergency management trainings, spotter safety classes, schools, health department workshops and even some Girl Scout troops!  It has definitely been a busy season already.

Speaking of busy seasons, we really have not had one here in Nebraska when it comes to storms yet. Yesterday, as the team travelled back north out of the tornadic storms down south, we began to discuss the possibilities of such an outbreak here in our home state.

Yesterday's violent storms tore through the southern Plains killed five people and injured dozens more, leaving behind flattened homes, toppled semitrailers and downed power lines.  Could it happen here?  We spoke with some folks affected by yesterday's strikes and all of them said the same thing: "We never thought it would be like this".  As usual, I wanted to use this blog to bring it up again...are you ready?

While on tour, we point out to kids at aschools that there is no real defined tornado alley when you take into consideration the number of tornadoes across the United States.  While we have a traditional alley that is marked from Texas through Oklahoma and Kansas into Nebraska and Iowa, is this really where tornadoes concentrate or is there a way to pinpoint even MORE dangerous areas of concentration?

Tornado statistics point to several mini Tornado Alleys, areas within the larger Tornado Alley of the United States where even higher concentrations of tornadoes have been reported.

On June 3rd of this year I will be one of the keynote speakers at the 30th Anniversary of "The Night Of The Twisters" in Grand Island. It will be my honor to share the stage with University of Nebraska-Lincoln Climatologist Ken Dewey.

According to Dewey, Nebraska may have a "mini" tornado alley.

VORTEX 2, $12 million study under way this spring on the cause of tornadoes may shed more light on the issue. You will see this group (and may have seen them last year) right here in Nebraska. This is a team of more than 100 of the nation's leading tornado researchers who will be crisscrossing the Plains in search of tornadic storms so that team members can deploy a fleet of sensors in the path of, and around, tornadoes.

These researchers are chasing the question: What happens within a storm to birth a tornado?

We hope that this year's research is successful because with a changing climate and growing population density, tornadoes are still that one weather phenomena that strikes unbelievably fast and we still have little warning. If it is true that Nebraska is an area of concentration, the results of this year's VORTEX2 could be more important than ever.

The National Weather Service has significantly improved its tornado warnings, but still overwarns in general and misses about a fourth of tornadoes. According to weather service statistics, warnings are issued for about 75 percent of tornadoes, but about 75 percent of warnings turn out to be false.

What Dewey found in a limited analysis of Nebraska's tornado numbers was a concentration of tornado reports in central Nebraska. That would KRVN Country, folks.

A more extensive, nationwide study of tornado data by the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., also found a spike in numbers in southern Nebraska and smaller pockets of increased tornado reports in central Iowa and northeast Nebraska.

The report noted that northeast Kansas and central Oklahoma were two areas of the Great Plains with significant-sized mini alleys.

It is May in Nebraska. What you are seeing on the news this morning could have happened here and may still happen.

As the storm clouds develop and the conditions become better every day for convective development, make sure you have had a drill with your family, that you have a home disaster kit, and that you have that weather radio in your home and turned on.

If you are on the roads during severe weather this month, remember that there is a large convoy of researchers racing toward a solution and this adds to the traffic during these difficult driving times.

Do we really have a higher risk here than other places? I believe we do, and obviously so does Ken Dewey, but even if we're wrong, it is still May in Nebraska...are you ready?