UPDATE: Greg Carbin of the Storm Prediction Center told the weather podcast Weatherbrains Monday night that analyses of previous outbreaks has resulted in a reduction of an average of about 25 percent from the total number of eyewitness reports.  His rough estimate for a tornado count for the 24 hours centered around the outbreak is 75. -mp

Some media outlets are reporting that more than one hundred tornadoes touched down in parts of Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska on Saturday.

This number is clearly being drawn from the Storm Prediction Center storm reports tally, and then is being repeated by some government officials as well.

Such a large number is simply not accurate.

When the Storm Prediction Center receives a report of a tornado sighting or clear tornado damage, the SPC places what is essentially a "push pin" on their map.  

They log each and every legitimate report that comes in from a different location.

The SPC and National Weather Service meteorologists then can use this tool in damage surveys as they estimate the strength of a tornado and length-of-travel.

The problem with using the SPC storm reports total number in a situation involving long-track tornadoes, the SPC will likely receive many reports involving just one single tornado!

If I see a tornado in one location and I call it into the National Weather Service, that is logged as one tornado report.  If you encounter the same monster tornado, say, five or ten miles away (or simply just in a new municipality) and report it, that's a second tornado report.

The tornado reports are not grouped or assigned to one tornado.   They are, again, "push pins" on a map.

On Sunday, the number of reports was inflated over previous years by the more-than-one hundred storm chasers present in the Plains.  Many of these chasers now have the capability to electronically send their reports of tornadoes and severe weather to the National Weather Service in real-time, thus enhancing the number of reports received from this event.

It is clear from looking at the SPC's map from Saturday that the southwest to northeast "streaks" of tornado reports apparent in Oklahoma and Kansas are from extremely long-tracked tornadoes.  

It is possible along those lines that several individual tornadoes occurred as a tornado will lift and another re-form in it's place.  (That's known as cycling, when a supercell essentially "re-loads" and drops a new tornado in the former's place.)

But, almost certainly, more than one hundred tornadoes did not touch down Saturday.

In my opinion, after careful research, surveys and correlating reports to radar records, my conservative estimate is that the eventual number of actual tornadoes will be far less than half that number of tornado reports presently listed.

Recommended Reading: "A Plea to the National Media" from Josh Johnson of WSFA-TV in Montgomery, Ala.

Join me Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. for the KIRO 7 Weather Chat at kirotv.com.  You can also find me on Twitter @morganpalmer and on Facebook.