Sixty-four hundredths of an inch of rain (up until noon) of a forecast two inches of much-need rain has fallen in Wichita today. With the slow rate of rainfall, wheat farmers are rejoicing. Photo taken at noon looking east down Douglas Street.

Here is the current list of warnings: Blizzard = orange. Pink = winter storm. Blue are winter weather advisories (a less erious condition). And, here is the AccuWeather regional radar. The rain is now starting to change to snow along the southern Colorado-Kansas border as the storm moves east.  Thunderstorms are continuing to bring beneficial moderate to heavy rains in the southern High Plains. Severe thunderstorms with a tornado threat will exist later this afternoon and tonight in a broad band from Dallas to Houston.

From AccuWeather, the white + symbols are the locations of cloud-to-ground lightning at 11am Central time. The darker colors are locations from the previous hour. Raw lightning data from Vaisala While people are not outdoors as often, the lightning itself is just as deadly in winter as it is in summer. Prepared accordingly when thunderstorms approach. 

As indicated in yesterday evening's update, the threat of major blizzard conditions (orange) now extends farther north in Kansas with blizzard warnings that now include Interstate 70. Pink is winter storm warnings and blue is winter weather advisories. The threat for tornadoes, large hail, and damaging thunderstorm winds exists in southeast and parts of central Texas today and tonight. Please keep up on the local weather in these areas. And, here is the AccuWeather regional radar as of 7:25am: Note the moderate to heavy snow falling in New Mexico along Interstates 40 and 25. AccuWeather's snow forecast is here . 

Back on May 22nd , this blog awarded our coveted Al Gore Award for Environmental Hypocrisy (motto:  I'll believe global warming is a crisis when the people telling me its a crisis start acting like its a crisis)  to Google's owners for lecturing us little people about the need to cut our carbon footprints while flying around in four (4) large private jets (we're talking 757-type, not Cessna Citations). They are now up to eight (8) private jets ! That is 2.8 jets per person. Unfortunately, you can only win the award once. So, our most recent winners are still Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Charles Hendry .

The winter storm continues to develop and warnings are being extended. As always, let's start with the forecast precipitation with this storm: Click to enlarge all graphics. Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Risk While certainly not a situation where major tornadoes are likely to occur, tornadoes and thunderstorms with damaging winds are possible in the area marked "slight" risk. I suggest residents of these areas monitor the weather tomorrow for possible watches and warnings. Blizzard and Winter Storm Here is a map of the winter weather warnings and watches as of 8:50pm. The orange is a blizzard warning. Travel is strongly discouraged in these areas. Pink is a winter storm warning. Turquoise is a winter storm watch (mainly northeast Kansas) and the blue is a winter weather advisory. This much is clear: Do not think about driving through the blizzard warning area -- roads will likely be closed and/or impassable. You could get stranded!   The amounts over southw...

I have been out of touch most of the day because I was at the terrific upset of the Chiefs over Green Bay this afternoon. The Chiefs looked like a completely different team today. As promised, I'm starting to work on a winter storm update and I'll have it up around 9:30 or 9:45.