Coming off a very interesting (and unusual) year of severe weather in 2021, it will be interesting to see what next year holds. 2021 featured yet another below average spring season, but did feature a few high-end events, and several destructive tornadoes on low risk days. Now let's take a look ahead to the 2022 season: December Forecast:
Obviously it's way to early to nail down any specific details so this won't be near as detailed as later forecasts, more of an early general prediction. We currently have a La Nina in place, and that is expected to continue into the spring before possibly going to neutral sometime in the spring/summer. This would generally feature a good chance of above average activity, but as we saw in 2021, this isn't always the case. Let's break it down by region/month:
Winter Season (Jan/Feb): I'm expecting an average Jan/Feb. More active than 2021 but not anything too crazy. Might have a few notable events, mainly in the deep south/Dixie alley.
March: March 2021 was very active featuring 3 big outbreaks, 2 in Dixie Alley and the other in the plains. While I do think March 2022 could be fairly active, I don't expect it to be as active as last year.
April: I expect April 2022 to be much more active than April 2021, with most of the activity featured in Dixie Alley, with perhaps a couple small scale plains events as well. With the La Nina in place, that should help generate a solid amount of activity across the deep south, and I think that activity will be mostly in April, rather then March like it was in 2021. I don't think April will be quite as active as April 2020, but I think it will be a month to watch out for.
May: May has proven to be quite the wild card in recent years, and it's going to come down to whether we get an active pattern or not. For now, I'm going with another below average-average month for the plains but that could change as we get closer.
Overall my very early prediction for overall activity for the spring season:
Plains: Average
Dixie: Above average
More detailed forecasts to come as we get closer to spring.
