On May 9th, this 988 mb storm off the east coast took on a very interesting appearance in water vapor imagery:
On May 22nd, 159 people were killed when a mile wide EF-5 tornado hit Joplin, MO. Radar showed an incredible strongly curved hook, intense couplet, and a debris ball over the Joplin area:
More radar images here. What I found most interesting about the Joplin tornado was how quickly it grew, which can be seen here.
Just two days after Joplin, a 989 mb low ejected into the southern plains, producing numerous tornadic supercells from Kansas to Texas:
This included an EF-5 which hit El Reno, OK, killing 9. 0Z RUC analysis had warm sector 0-1 km storm relative helicity at 600 M2/S2 over central Oklahoma, where a 45 knot westerly low level jet was directly over southerly surface winds. The 0-1 km SRH was almost as high as the 0-3 km.
On May 25th, the same system produced a squall line with embedded supercells that prompted tornado warnings that went from Effingham, IL to Dyersburg, TN:
On May 29th, this trough with 500 mb winds up to 90 knots produced a 984 mb low in Utah:
