ROCHESTER, N.Y. – I do not care if you are in grade school or a senior, like me. If you see a dark sky coming your way and it is late spring or early summer, you know that eventually there could be severe thunderstorms around Western New York. And that weather could include heavy downpours, lightning, damaging winds or even hail.

During the last 24 hours the “rough and tumble” weather has been located over Texas and Louisiana. Rainfall has been intense with some areas along the Texas, Louisiana border seeing 15 inches of rain in just 24 hours. That is the equivalent of what we measure here in three or four months. And in addition to the flooding rain they also had straight-line wind damage, isolated tornadoes and large hail across the deep south.

How does the severe weather compare on a national scale as it pertains to certain times of the year? That leads us to climatology and the average location for severe weather over a 30 year time period. The simplest way of explaining is to visualize the main concentration of storms in the deep south, but this area tends to expand northeast and northwest over the next two months. The big storms now reach their peak, or greatest probability of occurrence, over the upper Midwest, Ohio Valley, and the northeast. Of course that includes the great lakes and Western New York. It is usually the middle to the end of June that produces more thunderstorms for Rochester. Obviously, this is not a strict rule as we can see a thunderstorm just about any time of the year. 

But as we go through the season watch to see how this convective weather begins to expand north across the country. This is a natural consequence of more heat moving north and the increasing amounts of moisture as we head into the summer. Fortunately, as we go through the summer season the chances of severe weather will begin to diminish later in July and August. And rest assured that News 10NBC First Alert weather team will continue to alert you with the threat tracker each day.