The satellite and radar images coming out of Tuesday's severe weather is approaching "map porn" caliber for weather geeks. The top of this post features a high-resolution satellite image of the central United States, showing severe thunderstorms over Iowa and Illinois, as well as a stubborn and intense supercell near Denver, Colorado.
Parts of the Midwest from Des Moines to the Ohio River are under the gun for severe weather today. While a large chunk of real estate is at risk, it looks like the worst weather — including tornadoes and hail larger than golf balls — seem to favor Chicago this afternoon.
Up to a foot of rain fell across parts of the Balkans this weekend, creating the worst flooding the region has seen in centuries. As if that's not bad enough, the flooding and landslides are unearthing some of the hundreds of thousands of landmines planted in the ground during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.
Check out this great read from Brad Panovich today on the accuracy of meteorologists. A tornado warning accuracy rate of 70% and a 24-hour forecast accuracy of 94% makes meteorologists more accurate in their field, on average, than doctors who make cancer diagnoses and some professional athletes (again, on average).
Would you like to tour The Weather Channel's studios, meet the company's CEO, and give an on-camera report on your hometown's weather? You can!...for a price.
Thunderstorms on the northern Plains are some of the most breathtaking sights that nature can produce, and a handful of storm chasers were in the sweet spots yesterday to capture these incredible pictures of the storms.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. This week is a particularly bad week in weather history, with May 20 of last year seeing the horrific tornado in Moore, and May 22 featuring the even worse tornado that struck Joplin in 2011. Thankfully, the weather looks pretty quiet across most of the United States this week.
Sometimes it's pretty obvious what you're looking at on a satellite image. Most hurricanes or those classic tornado outbreaks in the Midwest leave no question as to their identity. But there are some features that make you think for a minute. This is one of those cases.
The chairman of the United Kingdom's Environment Agency thinks he has the solution to the problem of homes being damaged and destroyed by floods in his country: start building homes that can float on top of the rising water.
A television meteorologist in Ohio rescued a small kitten from the rubble of a barn after a strong tornado swept through Cedarville, Ohio on Wednesday.
As I write this post in my godforsaken part of North Carolina, it's a comfortable 61°F outside. The weather report also tells me that the relative humidity is 55% . For all intents and purposes, that means nothing. It's crap. Let me tell you why.
The National Weather Service reports that a tornado was spotted around 235PM EDT just west of the Miami Airport in southeastern Florida, moving northeast through the suburbs of Miami proper. While the rotation wasn't immediately evident on radar, the storm moving past the airport had a very clear pendant-like feature, which is likely where the tornado was located at the time.
Some of the scarier images coming out of the abundant wildfires this year are fire whirls, or "firenadoes." They are tornado-like swirls of smoke and fire that form in intense wildfires. Despite their popular name, firenadoes more similar to dust devils than they are to tornadoes. How do they form?
It gets lonely for a meteorologist all the way up in Alaska, so it's not surprising to see a forecaster for the National Weather Service office in Juneau posting a dating show-esque discussion about the day's weather models.
The intensely hot temperatures baking parts of the Los Angeles area this week are coming to a close, but not before managing to break a few more records by the end of the day today. Areas around downtown L.A. could exceed 100°F this afternoon.
The western United States is famous for its calm, predictable weather, so it's noteworthy when extreme weather happens. Parts of California and Oregon have been sweltering under heat exceeding 100 degrees in some spots, and it's making people ask "what gives?"
Americans have a long, rich tradition of ascribing otherworldly explanations to things we don't understand, so when people see a rare cloud formation, they come up with the two most obvious explanations: the government did it, or UFOs.
