March calendar day tornado records and the March 2012 outbreak

As the March 2, 2012 tornado outbreak was kicking into high gear today, I shared the image below on Twitter and Facebook. It’s a look at the highest number of tornadoes in one calendar day in March. The historical odds against even getting to 25+ tornadoes are rather significant (only a 0.8% chance).

Now, we can’t yet accurately compare today’s reports as far as historical records go, and there is a chance that some reports are double reports from the same area. Or one tornado reported as several while moving along a line, but the map is still rather staggering.