The rededication this Saturday morning -- under sunny skies with a perfect temperature -- was wonderful. People were reading the names of their loved ones and sharing memories of that F-5 tornado 68 years ago.  The rededication began with Amazing Grace, Taps,  and the flag presentation.  Several elected representatives spoke about the history of the event and the importance of of staying vigilant against future weather threats. I spoke as did Carolyn Brewer, author of Caught in the Path.  Carolyn Brewer speaking as I look on.  For the children there was a petting zoo, pony rides, and for families free hot dogs, pop corn, soft drinks, et cetera. It was great occasion! Since the memorial was destroyed by an errant driver in September, 2024, there were times we weren't sure this day would come. It was worth waiting for. Future generations will have an appropriate place to learn about and remember that critical day in Kansas City's history.  -------------------...

Saturday at 10am, the reconstructed Ruskin Heights Tornado Memorial will be re-dedicated.  The original memorial, pictured above, was destroyed when a car full of teenaged boys missed the corner at a high rate of speed and destroyed it.  We've spent the past year redesigning, overseeing and fund raising for the new memorial. Brad Smith (no relation) of KC Stone generously donated materiel and labor for memorial.  Saturday at 10am, there will be a rededication ceremony. Details are here . It will be at the intersection of Red Bridge and Blue Ridge Roads in south Kansas City (just south of Ruskin High School). After, there will be outdoor activities for children and other fun.  I will be speaking to explain how weather science saved lives that horrible evening. There will be new plaque added explaining how that evening was the first-ever government tornado warning. Of course, those warnings have saved thousands and thousands of lives during the past 60+ years. 

I admit, this blog has been pretty downbeat since the morning of July 4 and the horrific Texas Hill Country Flood. It has been necessary to, in our small way, to figure out when wrong and help prevent it from recurring.  Now: how about some absolutely wonderful news? Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. has published a remarkable study demonstrating the first six months of 2024 had the lowest number of weather-related deaths due to extreme conditions than any other first six months in recorded human history.  Before anyone jumps to conclusions about "climate denial" or related thoughts: Roger is a Democrat who has said he voted for Harris in November and also said, when President Biden dropped out, he supported Gretchen Whitmer to be the D nominee for President of the United States.  He wrote Sunday on his Substack, The Honest Broker: His study is  here .  While we have had the Texas and other floods that have produced deaths and other weather-caused fatalities since July 1 --...

I'm pleased to report that Wichita State University has finished cataloging my collection and it is now available for those researchers who wish to use it. You can click here to see what is available. The collection includes my papers, research and other information that I hope the community will find useful. 

Yesterday, we talked about Dr. Ryan Maue's proposals to reform the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Please scroll down for his thoughts.  Today, I'd like to bring to your attention  Dr. Cliff Mass's thoughts on reforming NOAA . He talks about the numerous issues facing the agency: I've looked at dozens of NOAA's grants involving DEI and climate change. Many millions  are spent on grants to third-party contractors on ill-defined projects that do nothing to improve our knowledge of the oceans or atmosphere and nothing to do with forecasting the same. Meanwhile the NWS is starved of resources -- with offices that have been well below prescribed staffing for more than a year. Weather balloons are not getting launched and other vital observations of the atmosphere are not being made.  Cliff also discusses why forecast quality has seriously diminished, both on the national level and in the local forecast offices. As he puts it:  And  NOAA i...

The people of Athens, Alabama, were struck by an EF-1 tornado Saturday night with no tornado warning. And, with our current radar network, warning of the tornado was not possible.  From time to time, I've mentioned there is a small percentage of tornadoes, usually weak, for which an advance tornado warning is not possible. That was the case in Athens. Radar Data The tornado touched down at 11:15pm. The radar data from the nearby Huntsville radar is below. 11:12pm 11:15pm 11:17pm At left, the reflectivity data, the type of radar data you see on television. There are no tornado signatures on any of the three frames. At right is the Doppler wind velocity data. No indication of a tornado at all.  The town of Athens is underlined. The tornado ended at 11:20pm. Unfortunately, we could successfully warn of this tornado. The good news is that there were no deaths or injuries.  Would more radars have allowed a warning to be made? It is possible, but I suspect this tornado spun up ...

In many ways, Hurricane Helene was the oddest I’ve ever covered. And I have been doing this for more than a half-century.  Helene at landfall As early as September 19, a number of either phony or malicious forecasts of the "worst hurricane in the history of the world" (i.e., barometric pressure  well  below 26 inches of mercury) would form in the Gulf of Mexico. One of those postings forecast a hurricane with a pressure of 833 millibars -- which is meteorologically impossible. Because those forecasts 1) cause needless angst and 2) hurt the credibility of genuine forecasts, I wrote on the 20th, “[the worst hurricane in the history of the world] It won’t happen.” One of the many ridiculous forecasts posted in the past week. Barometric pressure forecast below 26 inches of mercury. I also wrote in the same piece, “Could a tropical storm or even a hurricane form in the latter part of next [this] week? Yes.”   On the 22 nd , I began coverage of what would become Helene by ...

Ted Fujita with me in 1993. Ted visited WeatherData, Inc on a  couple of occasions, this was when he presented some initial findings of his research on Hurricane Andrew.  Unquestionably, the greatest and most innovative meteorologist of the 20th Century was  Dr. Ted Fujita . Among his discoveries were downbursts, the oscillating tornado alley, wall cloud association with tornadoes, suction vortices and The Fujita Scale, among others. Ted was personally modest and low-key about his accomplishments but he evoked a surprising amount of envy -- which has held weather science back in a number of ways.  While I cannot speak for others, the envy seemed to stem from his willingness to go into the field and do the very hard work of examining the debris, collecting unconventional data like individuals' photos of storms, and the emotional work of speaking to those affected. Because he was usually the only person willing to take this forensic approach, his success in getting fun...

On a discussion group this week, there has been discussion about the early days of Doppler radar. That was a topic we covered a while back. Here is a piece about the first time a Doppler detected a tornado (the F-4 El Dorado, KS Tornado) with a link to KAKE-TV's outstanding documentary on the topic. 

Does anyone else see anything missing in the captioning of the Twisters  trailer? In  Warnings ,  I wrote that weather science is the "Rodney Dangerfield of the sciences -- we get no respect." This is screen capture of a closed caption from the Twisters  trailer certainly an example.  A movie about weather and tornadoes and there is no mention of the National Weather Service or NOAA -- even though the movie's technical advisor was an employee of a NOAA lab! I don't blame him, I blame our science and the distaste many meteorologists have for engaging the public. And, while I won't name names, some of the people who are anti-public relations are the same people who complain that weather science is underfunded.  Weather science has cut the death rate (deaths per million population) by 95%. It is estimated the warnings for Hurricane Katrina saved more than 30,000 lives! Those are Nobel-worth accomplishments but hardly anyone knows about them. Our science needs ...

The economic loss and human casualties from the major storm and cold wave now winding down are still to be totaled, there is no question that they are much lower than they would have been 150 years ago before the science of meteorology began.  The conditions with this storm -- extremely cold air with a rapid drop in temperature -- have, in the past, resulted in horrendous loss of lives. For example, "The Children's Blizzard" of 1888 took a stunning 235 lives. The snow amounts in the Great Plains in '88 were not that great -- the maximum was just six inches. But the extreme cold and high winds combined with greatly reduced visibility caused the children to become lost. There were thousands of children walking home from school at the time and they were caught, unaware, in those extreme conditions. Many died from exposure.  That was certainly not the case with this storm. I made my first post about the cold wave on this blog on December 8 , 13 days before the start of th...