A couple of days ago, a large haboob — the meteorological term of Arabic origin for a sand/dust storm — raced across the panhandle of Texas and provided numerous opportunities for residents to take beautiful pictures of the wall of sand against the blue sky.

Okay, not really (it's probably ketchup), but still. After having it easy for the last few years, this winter's relentless cold and snow in the eastern two-thirds of North America has residents fed up.

As warm weather slowly creeps in, severe weather outbreaks will begin to happen more frequently. One of the most repeated phrases by victims after any weather disaster is "we had no warning!" With all the technology available today, that should never be the case. All homes, businesses, and schools should be equipped with a NOAA weather radio.

The Storm Prediction Center (SPC), the National Weather Service agency responsible for severe weather predictions, plans to unveil several new categories to its severe weather forecasts this spring. These forecasts — called "convective outlooks" — will see "marginal" and "enhanced" added to the four existing categories of severe weather risk.

A strong cold front passed through parts of the southeast and Mid-Atlantic this afternoon, bringing with it strong winds frequently gusting up over 50 MPH. Thousands of power outages are ongoing across the affected areas, including this one on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C.

Jesus pill-poppin' Christ, it's like they're getting stoned on bath salts and chewing off the face of meteorology just to see how much more ridiculous they can get before people finally stop watching.

The winter storm's central pressure continues to rapidly drop this evening, now near 980-981 millibars. Pressure is 982 millibars in Millersburg, WV and Johnstown, PA is currently 983 millibars. The radar overlay shows the storms lining up perfectly along the cold front, which is also clearly visible in the isobar kinks extending down the eastern side of the Appalachians. This is a storm right out of a meteorology textbook.

There's nothing I love more than taking pictures out an airplane window. It's an awesome experience for a weather geek to finally be up in the sky with the weather he or she tracks. But on my flight into Atlanta this past Monday, I was up in the sky and the weather was down on the ground. About an hour after sunrise, I noticed a thick layer of fog on parts of the South Fork Catawba River west of Charlotte, NC., while the rest of the ground was perfectly clear. Why did that happen?

Before the advent of the internet, only the most historic storms (that weren't hurricanes, of course) gained nicknames as a way to mark their place in history. The most infamous of these storms was one that gained the name "Storm of the Century," or the Superstorm of 1993. 21 years ago today, the superstorm-to-beat-all-superstorms began to organize in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

If you haven't heard yet, this one destroys New York City with bad acting, cheesy lines, and probably a couple of sharks.

A strong area of low pressure developing over the Ohio Valley tonight doesn't only spell tribble for the winter fatigued from Chicago to Maine expecting as much as two feet of snow, but a powerful cold front encroaching on a warm, moist airmass over the Mid-Atlantic will help touch off a nasty line of thunderstorms that could be severe, including the potential for a weak tornado or two.

In a perfect world, you could go to your local television news website and get the latest snowfall forecast issued by their team of dedicated meteorologists. But that's a perfect world, and this one is a search engine optimized hell where interns bash one another over the head to come up with the most clickbaity title possible.

WeatherNation TV, the competitor network to The Weather Channel that was thrust into the national spotlight after the latter got booted from DirecTV over a contract dispute, announced on Monday that the fledgling network will now reach almost 8 million Roku devices with the launch of its new streaming service on the platform.

The internet is a sprawling place that has its fair share of great sites, like this site that lets you scroll through a scale model of the solar system based on the moon being the size of one pixel. There are tons of weather sites out there and while a good portion of them are freaky conspiracy websites run by high schoolers with inexplicably large followings, there are some true gems that many weather enthusiasts have yet to discover. Here are the five weather sites I frequent the most for their awesome graphics and information.

In what appears to be blatant angling to acquire naming rights to Syfy's next godawful movie about winter storms full of tribbles or whatever, The Weather Channel named this week's major snowstorm "Winter Storm Vulcan," because they really want us to take them seriously.

Frequent fliers know the routine: seat up, bags stowed, phones in airplane mode, keep your seat belts fastened at all times as we can never predict rough air. When flight attendants go over their safety speech at the beginning of a flight, they're not doing it because they have to. The information is presented to help keep you safe. Rough air — polite airline-speak for turbulence — really can be unpredictable and dangerous if you're not strapped in when it happens.

One of the most contentious issues in the weather community isn't about climate change or the downward spiral of the quality of The Weather Channel in recent years, but rather about the location of Washington D.C.'s official weather observation station. It may sound silly to those outside of the D.C. area, but it's a real issue that affects weather reporting for the nation's capital.

Since 2006, the Meteorological Phenomena Identification Near the Ground (mPING) program run by the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) has helped meteorologists improve their forecasts and weather radar algorithms by using public reports to determine what type of precipitation is falling at ground level around the country.

Last week, NOAA announced the issuance of an El Niño watch as they predict about a 50/50 chance of the development of an El Niño later this summer or fall. Increasing sea surface temperatures in the western Pacific Ocean and above-average water temperatures below the surface of the central Pacific are the reasons why experts think that an El Niño could develop within the next six months. Depending on the strength of the possible El Niño, it could have a very real impact on the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season.

For the last few days, weather models have consistently signaled that there will be a nor'easter later this week sometime between Wednesday and Friday. While the potential storm is too far out to say for certain how much snow/ice will fall and where, it's looking increasingly likely that some areas from the Ohio Valley through New England will see another winter storm this week. If it plays out like last night's GFS model suggests (pictured above), the low will straddle the coast and provide the whole spectrum of wintry weather from rain to ice to snow.