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Extreme Times

An amazingly wet and stormy spring nationwide.

We're just back from a visit to the Storm Prediction Center in the beautiful flatlands of Oklahoma where they've been dealing with an unimaginable tornado season.

As we've noted, the numbers of April tornado sightings tripled the old record for the month, and this has been the deadliest season in 64 years.

As researcher Harold Brooks at the National Severe Storms Laboratory observed, this marks the first time since 1908 that tornados claimed 60 lives on two separate days.

But even aside from the tornados, the meteorological spring -- the March 1-May 31 period -- was an extraordinary one.

In all, seven state, including Pennsylvania, set all-time precipitation records for the period, according to the government's National Climate Data Center. Texas sent an all-time standard for dryness.

By contrast, only seven states completed the period with normal precipitation.

As Jeff Masters of Weather Underground noted in his blog, in over 100 years of recordkeeping the nation has never experienced a more-extreme spring in terms of wetness and dryness.