• Tornadoes
• Floods
• Hail
• Drought
• Wildfires

How many times can weather history be made in one month? I already reported on the six ways the April 2011 tornadoes broke records. Portions of Texas are still burning, while the residents along the floodplains of the Mississippi river are waiting for the flood waters to inevitably inundate their homes. The floods were caused by extreme amounts of snow in 2011, sudden melting, and the 10th wettest April on record.

Now, the National Climatic Data Center reports April 2011 was indeed an historic weather month. In a State of the Climate: April 2011 report, a minimum of 25 climate extremes.

The rash of tornadoes that plowed through the South in April were both historic and classic. The storms were historic because at least six major tornado records were broken in April 2011. Stu Ostro of the Weather Channel calls the tornado outbreak the "Katrina of tornado outbreaks." He also went on to discuss the ways the storm was a classic supercell storm. Ostro goes on to explain, "The atmosphere was explosively unstable with summer-like heat and humidity, interacting with a classic wind shear setup as a strong jet stream and upper-level trough crashed overhead." Read his full analysis of the April tornadoes here.

2011 has been an historic year in terms of weather. The devastating tornadoes of April are being followed by record-breaking floods along the Mississippi River in May. Over the next several weeks, flooding is not expected to dissipate. In fact, the river will continue to rise. More and more locations stand to be affected by the 100-year flooding.

At least six regions along the Mississippi River could reach record levels. Previous records, set in 1927 and 1937, could be broken similar to the record breaking floods in Georgia two years ago. The six cities in critical danger span from Tennessee to Louisiana.