There are several items online about the nation of Oman fining or even jailing people for making "inaccurate" weather forecasts. By listening to the video, we learn that is not the case. The crime is "unauthorized" weather forecasts. Evidently, they do not have the right to free speech in their nation and only the civil aviation authorities can make weather forecasts. As a private sector meteorologist for 55 years, you might be surprised how many people in our nation believe it is illegal for anyone but the government to make weather forecasts and storm warnings.  It is illegal to say your forecast is from the U.S. government's National Weather Service (misrepresentation). Other than that anyone can make and distribute a weather forecast in the USA because neither the federal government nor any state has licensing requirements. Whether that is a good thing is a separate discussion. 

☆☆☆☆ 1/2 Kathleen and I wanted to take a trip to celebrate our wedding anniversary this year. However, with all of the issues with flying recently -- and, as it turned out more than 1,100 flights were cancelled and 6,000+ delayed when we would have had to fly -- we wanted to find someplace in driving distance of Wichita. So, we chose the River Spirit Resort and Casino in Tulsa. We are very glad we did. This hotel complex is extremely well kept and the staff is polite, friendly and helpful with a few exceptions (see below). The rooms are very nice and both Kathleen and I thought the beds were extremely comfortable.  River Spirit has first-rate entertainment with Travis Tritt tonight and Trevor Noah tomorrow. There is live entertainment in the evenings scattered through the hotel. The casino is huge. I'm not much of a gambler, but because everyone asks, "How did you do at the slots?" when you vacation at a casino, I put $8 into them, won $14, for a net gain of $6 -- more th...

A few of the autumn-themed photos in my collection I'm gratified by those licensing my photograph at Adobe Stock Photography . If you are in the market for stock photography, I hope you will check out my collection.  You'll find many cloud and storm photos along with quite a few rural shots. 

One of the most successful songwriters in history has passed away: Motown's Lamont Dozier. Click here to read the list of popular songs his wrote or co-wrote. You'll be amazed.

Here is a shot of the rain shaft associated with a weak downburst at 5:40pm southwest of downtown Tulsa.  You can see Tulsa's Riverside Airport in the foreground. Downbursts, even of this intensity, are dangerous to planes when they land and take-off when they are over airports.  The radar at the same time shows the storm. On the left is the reflectivity image which shows how hard it is raining. On the right is the wind. The greens are colors showing winds blowing toward the radar and reds away from the radar. The peak gusts weren't all that high, about 35 mph.  

Daily Mail While I am glad the President and First Lady visited Kentucky, his statement is ridiculous. We have no way of controlling the weather regardless of the level of the CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 ≠ meteorological thermostat. The President was accompanied by Deanne Criswell, the Director of FEMA. I was surprised by the number of comments in The Daily Mail  and elsewhere along these lines of, "I hope FEMA doesn't screw this up."  The Kentucky floods are a perfect example of why we need a National Disaster Review Board (more on that topic, here ). Thirty-seven people have died and there are reports that more are missing. The forecasts and warnings of this flood were pretty good yet the death toll was high. Some meteorologists on the scene told me the warnings were not believed. Why? How can we fix that? How can FEMA be made more effective? A National Disaster Review Board would employ the meteorologists, earth scientists and social scientists we need to get to the bot...