If you live in or near a Midwest flood-prone area, I recommend keeping an eye on the forecasts for the next few days.  The U.S. National Water Center is forecasting a risk of flooding in the hatched area over the next five days. Please ignore the colored dots.  Here are some of the (updated at 1pm) forecast rainfall totals for the next five days. As much as eight inches of rain is forecast with this slow-moving weather system. Remember: the location of the maximum rain (border of Iowa and Missouri) is an approximate forecast. 

The area in brown has a significant risk of tornadoes later today. Please keep up on the weather in this area. 

Below, I mentioned it had been an active tornado season in North Dakota and here are the numbers. The NWS office in Minneapolis has also had a big year.  It is also a big year in the south central U.S. and the central and lower Mississippi Valley.  Meanwhile, Kansas is well below normal. 

The brown area has a significant risk of tornadoes later today. North Dakota has had an active tornado season and it will continue today. 

I love live music and this was the finest concert I've seen. It was last night at the Kauffman Center in Kansas City. The concert hall has incredible acoustics. And at the age of 90, yes 90 , he can blow that horn!  I was chatting with the host while being seated at the restaurant for lunch today and he asked, "Did Herb play Rise?" Yes, he did.  Take a listen to A Taste of Honey.   There were nice tributes to Karen Carpenter, Sergio Mendes, Burt Bacharach and his late partner, Jerry Moss (the "M" in A&M Records).  Herb brought out Lani Hall, his wife. She is the former lead singer of Sergio Mendes & Brazil '66. She performed a short medley of Brazil '66's songs. Lani is frail and had to be led to/from the stage. Her voice is not as strong as it once was.  If I counted correctly, there were  eight  standing ovations. All deserved. These are virtuoso musicians.  I also appreciated that Herb said toward the end, "this is where we would walk...

With the mess this spring with regard to the National Weather Service, especially regarding hurricane forecasting, I have good news. #1. The concern about the microwave data from the DMSP satellite is over. It will continue for the life of the satellite. #2. Even more important is a peer-reviewed paper published last week that demonstrates the importance of the entire suite of hurricane hunter data.  Every American Meteorological Society journal contains a "significance statement" that explains how it advances the science. Here's the statement with this paper: When a tropical cyclone in the Atlantic Ocean is forecast to make landfall in the United States and its territories, the Gulfstream IV (G-IV) aircraft is used to collect data from the environment around the hurricane with the goal of improving the hurricane track forecast. Our study aims to evaluate whether these data improve the track forecasts of hurricanes from 2018 to 2022 by comparing forecasts with these data...