So very glad to hear of his conversation to Christianity before he passed away. May God rest his soul.  I'm told this was his favorite Dilbert: Everything we did at WeatherData, Inc. was UNIX or LINUX but we did have the occasional homonym program. 😉

Important note (11:45a Tuesday): A counter-argument for PAR, not based on tornado warnings or weather, is here . It is worth your time. That said, the essay below is still valid.  The protective dome being placed over the Phased Array Radar at the National Severe Storms Laboratory.   Behind the scenes to much of the public, the weather science community has been furious with the Trump Administration's proposed and actual cuts in meteorological research. One of the institutions affected is NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). Surprising, to many, I agree with some of those cuts. The reason is that some of this research has simply not been paying off after years and years of experimentation.  For a quarter-century,  NSSL has been experimenting with Phased Array Radar (PAR) which allows the atmosphere to be scanned more quickly than using a conventional radar. Work began in 2000 and the first real-time data was collected in 2004. One of the selling poi...

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch :

Since this blog began in November, 2009, more than twenty million page views have been recorded as of this morning. Thank you so much for reading and, occasionally, reaching out with comments. Your interest and support are greatly appreciated. 

Above is the three day precipitation ending at 11m this morning. Desperately needed rain fell from the Great Plains into the Midwest. Heavy rains, more than six inches in spots, fell from Mississippi into southern Alabama. Unfortunately, a few tornadoes did damage in Louisiana and Mississippi last night and this morning but -- based on the latest reports -- the damage was not major and no fatalities were reported.  The white from Kansas into New Mexico and Colorado are what farmers in social media are calling the "million dollar snow." As much as 15" fell in far western Kansas. Winter wheat is planted in the fall, goes dormant in the winter, then grows rapidly in spring. It is harvested in early summer. This snow gradually melts providing soil moisture and -- when it is extremely cold -- protection from the elements.