My friends at AccuWeather have put together a brief video of many types of rainbows. Just click here . 

Girls evacuating during at the beginning of the flood from  cabins to the Rec Hall.  Some sad news out of Texas: Camp Mystic, the Christian girls camp along the Guadalupe River in Texas since 1926, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy . That means they are going to ask a court to deal with their debts with hope of reopening at some point.  Of course, Mystic was the camp where 28 girls and adults perished during the extreme flash flood the morning of July 4, 2025. The State of Texas has found the planning for flash floods, especially since the camp was right next to a river known for flooding, was wholly inadequate. The report of the Texas Senate was released yesterday and it is here . Given the nature of Chapter 11, it is likely the owners of the camp will lose their equity and the camp may be sold to others. Whether anyone will come forward is unknown.  While the owners of the camp deserve a great deal of criticism for the lack of meteorological preparedness (based o...

....My family was closely following the weather . A supercell thunderstorm had moved near Emporia, Kansas -- where it produced large hail -- on its way toward Williamsburg and Ottawa where it produced an F-5 intensity tornado that began killing people at Ottawa, moved through densely populated south Kansas City, and then lifted near the suburb of Raytown, MO. Forty-four people were killed and as many as 500 were injured.  Charles LeMaster via The Ottawa Herald. Used with permission.  This tornado was historic because it was the first time the federal government's Weather Bureau issued what we could call today a "tornado warning." Those warnings have saved lives! The number is likely in the tens of thousands.  Here's another story, just published today , of how a tornado warning and a tornado safe room allowed a young woman to graduate from high school this week.  Members of the AccuWeather team on a storm warning client "field trip" It was this storm, known...

The NWS's job -- and only job -- should be to provide outstanding forecasts and  storm warnings for the public-at-large, which pays their salaries.  With the National Weather Service falling apart , the last thing they should be doing is redeploying meteorologists -- when they are already badly shorthanded -- to World Cup cities to provide weather security for the matches.  Kansas City World Cup ticket prices. These are the  least expensive tickets for each match.  Addition: These are prices for the Denver games. The price is for a pair of tickets. You want to tell me to believe the  organizers cannot afford a few thousand dollars for an  expert commercial meteorological service?! The FIFA (World Cup organizers) should take the revenue from just a few of those tickets and pay a commercial weather company -- which after all specialize in this type of assignment -- to do the weather security. This especially true since NWS meteorologists' training in han...

In the wake of the catastrophic July 4, 2025, flash floods in the Texas Hill Country, AccuWeather has reached out to the camps, officials in the area, and others to create a camp-specific severe weather warning system. USA Today  tells the story (with an unfortunate and inaccurate reference to global warming).  Congratulations to my former colleagues at AccuWeather on this lifesaving work!

Addition at 11:15am Monday. This is the NWS's product which shows the total amount of ice. The white star in northern Mississippi is where the greatest amount of ice accumulated, 1.24" just east of Oxford, Mississippi. Compare to the map below which was ice effect's forecasts five days  in advance. Note: the ice from Virginia to New Jersey fell in the time interval beyond the range of the forecast below.  While this forecast wasn't perfect (West Virginia's ice would be forecast in later versions of the forecast), it provides lots of time for utilities to bring in crews from around the nation to speed the recovery.  -------- original post -------- This is the forecast on this blog Wednesday . It is from the NWS and where they expected the worst effects of the pending ice storm. This, via AccuWeather is where the power outages are the worst at this time (Sunday afternoon). At first glance they don't look the same because they are different base maps. But if you c...

It will be important to test your furnace before the cold wave arrives as well as to insure your pets are cared for. There will be quite a bit of snow in the usual "lake effect" areas.  P.S. I note that some NWS products are not available this afternoon. I do not know if it is because of the government shutdown or because of other problems. Companies like AccuWeather are not shut down and will continue to produce their products on their normal schedules. 

AccuWeather has a useful story here . 

It is always a pleasure to be able to review a book that is well written and has a fresh point of view. One might call Dr. Joel Myers' book,  Invisible Iceberg,  the first biography of weather. It begins with the role of weather in the extinction of the dinosaurs and “Noah’s” flood and gradually takes us into modern times including a fascinating look at how weather affected the sinking of the Titanic , the assassination of President Kennedy, and September 11 th .    Joel is a brilliant man and the meteorological entrepreneur of AccuWeather (AW) and I had hoped for years he would write a book. It was worth waiting for. Joel was my boss when I sold the assets of WeatherData, Inc. to AW in 2006 and went to work for his company (I retired in 2018).   Each chapter is an easy read; usually 2-6 pages and I’ve learned a lot reading it. I thought I knew, for example, how the weather affected the sinking of the  Titanic,  but it turns out there is much more than...

2022 tornado, image by Ben Holcomb The NWS did not  provide an advance warning of this Kansas tornado as the tornado was in progress when the warning was issued. [If you aren't a meteorologist or meteorology student, feel free to skip this post.] On December 1, we published a piece outlining our recommendations pertaining to the future of the National Weather Service . There are serious  issues pertaining to the way meteorologists are educated and trained in 2024 that desperately need to be addressed in 2025.  Today, I want to focus on one of the recommendations pertaining to meteorologists' training:   There is an expectation that meteorologists should be able to intervene and change a forecast when the computer forecasts are obviously wrong. But, as aviation safety has learned, there is no way for people to overrule defective automation output when they have little or no experience doing so.  An analogy: Why did Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash in 2013 in...

This was published Tuesday.  This, published yesterday, is the first 12 paragraphs of the above.  The full article is behind a paywall and I have been able to read only about half, but there are so many similar articles floating around the media these days that I can pretty well figure out what the rest says.  The (strongly left-leaning) Bloomberg wants to convey the impression that weather forecasting and storm warnings are a federal government monopoly. They aren't; not even close. The article has all of the hallmarks of originating within NOAA in a desperate attempt to stave off the major changes most everyone in the field knows need to be made. Note that in the first 11 paragraphs (all that are available before the paywall) there isn't a single non-NOAA source.  Left-wing reporters at left-wing organizations, especially in Washington, will generally take federal agency press statements and run with them. But NOAA has never been a monopoly or even a real leader in...