A Rare Leap Day Year?

Leap years are one of those unique years that add a day to a typical year so most of us either think of   OR  .

A leap year will come every 4 years with a leap day so what can make this leap years leap day a rare one?  This!!! 

The 2012 Leap Day Tornado Outbreak was one for the history books due to its intense tornadoes and the time of year that it occurred.  It began February 28th in Nebraska and ended in the Virginia's on February 29th.  A two day total of 434 storm reports were recorded with 48 of the reports to be tornadoes, 293 to be wind damage, and the remaining 93 to be hail reports.  Keep in mind that a lot of these reports are reported from the same storm at the same location so there are always more storm reports than what actually happened.  Wind and hail reports are hard to clean up and separate, but tornadoes can be easier to separate from the actual number of tornadoes to the number of reports.  So far there has been 40 reported tornadoes from this event and 39 of those have been confirmed with the strongest being an EF4 in Harrisburg, IL.  The overall rankings of these tornadoes are 7 EF0, 13 EF1, 16 EF2, 1 EF3, and the Harrisburg EF4.  Unfortunately, with the number of tornadoes that occurred and most of them during nighttime hours there has been 13 deaths confirmed.  Like all situations though, there is the bright side where there could have been more deaths, but due to today's technology and great lead time for warned places more lives were saved.

Now one question stands out, is this the only memorable leap day?  Of course not!  Back in 1748 on February 29 some of the heaviest snow fell from the "Winter of the Deep Snow" leaving Salem, MA along the coast with more than 30 inches of snow.  In 1952, three tornadoes tore through Tennessee counties of Marshall, Lincoln, and Warren leaving behind 166 people injured and 4 dead.  In 1988, southern California was in the spotlight with heavy rain where 4.67 inches fell in Ventura County at Tommys Creek.  Other parts of the U.S. was dealing with record high temperatures.  In 2000, Rapid City, SD broke a city record for the longest consecutive number of the days without falling below 0 which was 421 days on February 29th.  It's previous record was 362.  Most recently in 2008, The world's tallest snowwoman was revealed in Bethal, Maine named "Olympia".  She stood an astonishing 122 feet and 1 inch tall and weighing an amazing 13,000,000 lbs or 6,500 tons!