I'm so old that I remember when NOAA focused on accurately forecasting the weather.  While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with many of these projects, there is nothing like this on the meteorology side of the organization. That is result of 50 years of NOAA management that knows little to nothing about weather forecasting. So, 30-year old radars are breaking down with no plan to replace them, areas of the country that need radar coverage are not getting it, et cetera.  Rather than focusing on its core missions, I guess it is more fun to hand out other peoples' money. 

The Department of Defense is -- finally -- discovering what the rest of us have known for two decades. Story is here . 

Elon Musk launched the largest rocket ever constructed today. It was fine at first and then it exploded. 

As of 2 o'clock this afternoon, substantial rains had occurred in northeast Kansas, northwest Missouri and much of Iowa.  Unfortunately, yet again, the High Plains missed out.  This afternoon is one of the rare times when all models are in agreement that rain will occur throughout the winter wheat belt the next two weeks. Below are the most two reliable models; the ECMWF (upper) and Canadian (below). Let's hope these are correct. The rain is desperately needed. 

Looks like a significant part of Australia's temperature rise was an artifact of switching to electronic thermometers. Jo Nova has a report, here .  We've had similar issues in the United States due to electronic thermometers. We've written about this before. The NWS/NOAA solution was to "adjust" the data.  National Weather Service cooperative weather station  with air conditioner blowing hot air on the  electronic thermometer.  Because of these issues, including controversy over the adjustments, NOAA received funding from Congress to install a state-of-the-art U.S. National Climate Research Network which required no adjustments. Interesting, when you plot all 18 years of data from that network, there is no warming at all. See below. This is why merely measuring the amount of warming the last 100 years is far more difficult than non-meteorologists would expect. 

This evening was an unusual weather situation with three areas within the same weather system where tornadoes were produced. The middle area, in Kansas, was not covered by a tornado or severe thunderstorm watch. That is an official product of the National Weather Service, so I do not use the words "watch" or "warning" unless it comes from them.  So, how does a private-sector meteorologist let people know in advance that a storm may produce a tornado and that it is time to prepare? I don't know of a perfect way, but this is what I did earlier today. I added the orange outline to the area where the NWS was going to issue its tornado watch (red). Chase County, where the tornado occurred, is under the abbreviation, "Dam" for damaging winds. That was posted just before 3:30pm. At 6:05pm, it was becoming clear that a new thunderstorm was forming to the south of an existing line of thunderstorms. Meteorologists and storm chasers call these "tail-end char...

Tornado Watch Until 11pm National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch for the area outlined in red.  A second tornado watch for Oklahoma and northwest Texas till 11pm. The tornado watch includes Oklahoma City, Norman and Wichita Falls.  Original Post: Here is my forecast from 4:30pm until 1am.  "Giant hail" = hailstones 2" in diameter or larger. Damaging winds = 60 mph or stronger. Gusts of 75 mph or stronger are not out of the question.   FYI: The NWS Storm Prediction Center has a second area of significant tornado risk (brown) in Oklahoma. While I believe large hail is likely with any thunderstorms that develop along with the potential for damaging winds, I believe the tornado risk -- while certainly not zero -- is not especially high.  Regardless of where you live in these areas, please keep up on the latest weather information.