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"In Mississippi, it's a little unusual, more than other parts of the country. You have a severe weather season that starts in November. You can look at it two ways. Either it continues all the way through May or it lulls in the winter and kicks back up in the spring," he said.
The whole interview
We checked National Weather Service stats available on the web and found that three out of the 21 deadliest twisters happened in November or December. Eight others happened in winter months like January and February.
Wilkinson said there's a reason to be particularly concerned about November tornadoes.
"Don't let your guard down at night, because that's when a lot of them come during the fall season."
We checked the data on that, too and found that, in general, there are more day twisters than night twisters, but for F3s (not the strongest, but mighty strong) the number of day and night tornadoes was almost equal. For F2s it was also pretty close. The Weather Service hourly data didn't break it down by season.
We asked Wilkinson if his team had any predictions for this November. He told us that we're in a weak El Nino weather pattern.
"El Nino tends to have some fairly active November seasons and then it drops off in the winter. So, if El Nino holds, we would generally expect the potential for a tornado event or two in November, then kind of settling into the spring."
Wilkinson's advice-Don't let your guard down, tune in to the media, keep your weather radio handy and watch the skies.
Tornado in Yazoo-video by M.K. Davis, used with permission
