TORNADO SEASON - Do Tornadoes Skip???

As part of my interest in tornadoes and the significant damage they can cause, I've chosen to discuss some aspects of tornadoes that you may not have already known, or perhaps you already knew....

In this section, a question about tornadoes is, "Do tornadoes really skip?"

First, let's define what a tornado is:
 "...in order for a vortex to be classified as a tornado, it must be in contact with the ground and the cloud base."

Therefore, in a literal sense, a tornado cannot really skip, since it must be in contact with the ground.
Stories of skipping tornadoes usually mean:

1) There was continuous contact between vortex and ground in the path, but it was too weak to do damage;

2) Multiple tornadoes happened; but there was no survey done to precisely separate their paths (very common before the 1970s);

3) There were multiple tornadoes with only short separation, but the survey erroneously classified them as one tornado.

(Thanks to Roger Edwards of the Severe Prediction Center)

I will be looking at our severe weather chances in the next post. Stay tuned. A MODERATE risk is already out there for the region. And as I said previously, some may go to a HIGH risk chance for the Tue-Wed time frame. Chance for storms tonight into tomorrow morning may bear watching as well.
MS