Jason Samenow of the Washington Post  offers five priorities for the National Weather Service in a provocative article . My thoughts are similar but I would express them this way: Build the best weather observing and data gathering system the world. The best model will not live up to its potential unless excellent data is used in its initial analysis. Better data will make all  of the models' (European, Canadian, etc.) forecasts better. Yes, this includes fixing the satellite gap Jason writes about. It also includes looking out a few years at aging radars and other pieces of the NWS's infrastructure.  Build state-of-the-art mesoscale models. While I would like to the see the U.S. overcome the European's advantage in medium to long range modeling, the fact is the tornadoes, thunderstorms, aviation turbulence, blizzards, and ice storms are best forecast with fine-grained "mesoscale" models .   Overtake the Europeans in medium range (five to fifteen day) forec...

Yes, there are fog, flood, and freeze warnings (among others) but not a single precipitation-based  (i.e., heavy snow, severe thunderstorm) warning out anywhere in the 50 states.

This looks like a generally good forecast. However, in Kansas, I'd pull the dark blue and light blue areas about 50 miles northwest and, in Oklahoma, about 50 miles west. The computer models with the last couple of storms have had somewhat of an east bias with the start of the precipitation.  I agree with their place of the heaviest rains from the Ozarks to the ArkLaTex. Given the cool weather and this moisture, I'm starting to get concerned about planting delays in the Delta soybean area. Much of the western corn belt needs the moisture before planting can occur.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy By the way, the screen capture above is from a video of the Pampa, Texas, tornado taken by Chuck Doswell and Alan Moller. It is crossing the Santa Fe (now BNSF) busy "Transcon" rail line. The reason there is no train in the picture was because of WeatherData's (now AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions) tornado warning which allowed Santa Fe to get its trains out of the area and safe from the tornado.

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Let's begin with the amount of precipitation the last 48 hours. click to enlarge any map The above precipitation is not included in the map below that shows how much rain is needed to officially break the drought. The amounts below are in addition to the normal rainfall. Flooding is starting to be a concern in parts of the Southeast. The dark green areas are already too wet. Plus, one to two inches fell (see map at top) in parts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia since 7am Saturday, when the data period for this map ended. There is also a moisture surplus around St. Louis. So, what are the prospects for rain, especially as it pertains to the winter wheat crop, for the next month or so? For the next seven days, this is the National Weather Service's rainfall forecast. The above map takes us to about the first of April. How does April's rainfall look? I did posting on that last week . The data since then continues to be encouraging. Here is the U.S. April...

click to enlarge Via AccuWeather's Jesse Ferrell and his WeatherMatrix Blog , there is a tremendous difference in snow cover across the U.S. this morning compared to one year ago today. Addition... Global warming golden oldie (h/t Glenn Reynolds): Snowfalls a Thing of the Past , from March, 2000 .