Claim: ‘Extremely cold winter months likely held down the number of tornadoes in Oklahoma this year, resulting in the fewest twisters in the state since 1988’

Only 13 tornadoes hit the state through June this year, which was the latest available data. Only one of those tornadoes — an April 27 EF2 that injured 12 and killed one person in Quapaw — was of any “significance,” said Greg Carbin, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.

Only numbers through June are officially available at this time, as data is still being collected on July and August, though those months saw no significant action, Carbin said.

The 13 tornadoes on record through the first six months of 2014 is the lowest total in Oklahoma since just 10 were documented during the same time frame in 1988, according to meteorologist Doug Speheger.

“I believe that those are the only years on record since the modern era of tornado documentation in 1950 that Oklahoma has had that few tornadoes in that time period,” Speheger said.

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