During the April to July severe weather season in the Midwest, two periods of extreme activity led to unprecedented levels of severe storm events being reported. The first period encompassed the historical tornado outbreak of May 4, 2003, when 18 people died in western Missouri alone. Severe weather outbreaks occurred with such repetition and force that all-time records were set for tornado reports in the month of May in just the first two weeks of the month. After more isolated severe events in June, a second cluster of severe storms was visited upon Indiana and Ohio during the first 10 days of July. The most critical elements of destruction with these storms were heavy rain, flash flooding, and record river flooding. More than 10 people died from storm activity and flooding during the period. A large number of additional severe events and impacts occurred in the Midwest beyond the these two extreme periods. Because of the totality of this extraordinary activity, the severe storm season of 2003 will go down as one of the worst in Midwest history.

During the period, the Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC) and State Climatologist offices in the region produced many timely reports on the situation, including press releases and frequent Web site updates. In cooperation with state climatologists within the region, the MRCC undertook a study of the storms of 2003. This presentation will outline some of the analyses and conclusions of this work. Some of the featured results include the probabilities and return intervals of days, months, and seasons with large numbers of severe weather reports, a detailed observational examination of the May severe weather outbreak and the heavy July rains and floods in Indiana and Ohio, and examples from a suite of smaller case studies of severe events in Illinois and other states. The role of RCCs and SCs in performing real time climate monitoring in the U.S. will also be discussed.