There is a significant risk of tornadoes in the brown area. This includes North Platte.  In addition, over the next week, there is a risk of flooding developing in the Northwest in the middle to latter part next week.  Heavy rains are also forecast in southeast Oklahoma and a small part of Arkansas. However, given the drought, I doubt any flooding will major.

I invite you to check out my collection at Adobe Stock Photography .  With autumn here, there are several from which to choose. Please check back from time to time as more are being added. 

A while back, I wrote a parody about Big Climate and my fictional character, Dr. Strangeclimate . Before going further, I invite you to read that piece as I hope it will simultaneously cause you to laugh and feel chagrin.  As you might expect, some questioned whether things really work this way. They do! Yesterday, a friend forwarded to me this "help wanted" ad from LinkedIn: What is a "rapid response director" for an organization called Climate Power? Exactly what is described in the "Strangeclimate" parody. A rapid response director's job is to have press releases ready to blame climate change for every sort of bad weather -- leaving only the location and dates blank. They will often start releasing these even before the storm strikes. Why? The storm might not be as bad as forecast and so would lose the opportunity if they had to base the panic press releases on reality.  All of this is to try to influence public opinion and clear the political battl...

James is an international business consultant and I certainly appreciate his kind remarks.  My book, Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather is here . And, its companion book, When the Sirens Were Silent  is here . With regard to the latter book, the paper book sold out a long time ago. But, you can still read it without a Kindle by using the Amazon Cloud Reader.  If your company would like assistance weatherproofing your business, please go here . I'd be happy to talk with you. 

Here are miscellaneous thoughts in no particular order: One of the numerous small towns in southern Missouri along U.S. 60. The drive from Springfield, MO to Sikeston, MO on U.S. 60 across the southern part of the state is a very pleasant drive with little traffic and a near interstate-quality highway. The scenery of the Ozarks is nice if you like lots of trees. It bypasses most of the small towns. The very best service station between Wichita and Nashville is Kerr's in Poplar Bluff, MO. Gas was $3.34 and the bathrooms were among the cleanest we have ever seen. The staff was extremely pleasant.   Is there a worse GPS routing system than Apple Car Play? You are better off with a road atlas. Car Play wants to take you through little towns and two-lane blacktops as it seems to want to lead you on the absolute shortest route -- even if it takes longer and the roads it recommends are terrible. The only thing of interest we saw that we wouldn't have otherwise is that the U.S. 60 brid...

While we were attending the funeral last week, there was a damaging tornado near Killingly, CT on September 14. AccuWeather provided its clients in the area with 17 minutes of advance warning. Meteorologist Dr. Craig Ceecee warned his twitter followers of an unwarned later tornado in the series. Who wasn't warning? The National Weather Service. The CT tornado was on the ground doing damage for nine minutes. The NWS didn't warn until the tornado was 1 minute from lifting -- likely too late to do any good.  I happy to try to assist the NWS in fixing these failures to perform its core mission. So far, they don't seem interested. This puts the onus on television and radio meteorologists to backstop the NWS's tornado warning program.  This was radar during the fatal (4 dead) Matador, Texas, before it reached the town and caused the deaths on 6/21/23. There was no tornado warning in spite of the tornado in progress. Full report is here .  While I would leave the te...

Evidently, ridiculous construction signs are not confined to Kansas. This was barely across the border in southwest Missouri last week. Every one mile there was a sign telling motorists there was no center line -- but the entire roadway had a nice, easy-to-view, center line the entire time we were on it.  However,  in Illinois, where there was no center line there were no signs. We had to make a cross country trip of 1,500 miles this past week. There is often very little correlation between road signs and actual highway conditions.