We've had a flood overnight and this morning of the nature that has a probability of just 0.5% in any given year.  Nearby rivers will overflow, so please -- if you are near the purple areas -- keep up with trusted local weather information, especially if you live in a flood-prone area. 

The area in brown has a significant risk of tornadoes. Please keep up on trusted local weather information.

An absolutely bizarre situation in central Kansas today when a tornado occurred -- with photos circulating on Twitter -- without a tornado warning. The dangerous tornado warning "cancer" continues to spread across the National Weather Service (NWS). I'm going to run through the events of this afternoon and evening chronologically. Let's begin with my blog post (below) at 3:23pm. The times refer to when the message became publicly available.  3:23pm  I forecasted a tornado threat, giant hail and wind gusts of 65 mph or stronger. All three types of weather occurred.  3:44pm A severe thunderstorm developed in central Kansas. It was moving southeast but I expected it to begin moving south shortly. I mentioned there was "a chance of a tornado or two." 3:56pm This is my least favorite type of watch: a severe thunderstorm watch but with "a couple of tornadoes possible." I believe these should be tornado watches. Regardless, the NWS SPC in Oklahoma came to...

IF  thunderstorms develop in that area this afternoon or early evening (now until 8pm), it is very likely they will produce giant hail and wind gusts of 65 mph or stronger. There is even a small tornado threat.  Please follow me on Twitter @usweatherexpert  where I will provide updates. 

I was questioned this morning about my view of politics and global warming. So, since we have thousands  of new readers this summer (thank you!), I thought I would postmen answers here, also: We've "done" plenty about climate change -- $1+ trillion dollars. The problem is that  neither side is doing anything effective. D's listen to the wind lobby -- one of the most vicious -- and as a result installed ineffective windmills that drive up rates and destabilize the grid. I live in the Great Plains. You can hardly turn around without running into a wind turbine -- often not turning.  The R's don't listen to hype (please see:  https://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2023/07/yes-climate-news-is-broken.html  ) which is a good thing, but they often don't listen to the honest scientists who have good insights as to what should be done.  We need to correctly define the problem: violent tornadoes are  less  frequent over the last 50-70 years, normalized to...

This past Tuesday, I linked to a piece by Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. about the broken nature of news related to climate . Earlier today, I was part of a situation which clearly illustrates the problem.  Just before we headed out to Mass, I received an email from BBC World News asking me to appear. The email said, I believe I was approached because I've appeared several other times for them. However, the last time, they placed a bit of pressure on me to say that the previous day's tornadoes, that were the reason for my appearance, were caused by climate change. Of course, I could not. The evidence indicates the opposite .  So, I replied to her email this morning that I would be happy to appear but that I didn't want to disappoint them because I would say there were much worse heatwaves in United State's history and, while climate change might have affected this heatwave, it did not cause it.  I requested she let me know either way. Surprisingly, I did not hear back from her. ...

It is another active weather day: Tornadoes The brown area has a significant risk of tornadoes. Flood Risk The area in red has an enhanced  risk of flooding.  If you live in these areas please monitor trusted local sources of weather information.