Hi! I need your feedback, if you wouldn’t mind. Several readers have chimed in over the past week or two about how I could better design the maps that appear here on The Vane to make them more readable for both desktop and mobile users. I aim to please, so if you have any comments or suggestions about how I can make my maps better, please let me know.
As we close in on the end of meteorological spring, here’s a look at the 737 tornado reports sent to the Storm Prediction Center between March 1 and May 29 (today). It wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, all things considered. The actual number of tornadoes is lower than 737—multiple reports exist for many tornadoes, and some damage reported as being caused by a tornado turns out to be straight-line wind damage, instead.
There's a nasty cold air damming event going on across the Piedmont this afternoon. Here in Podunk, North Carolina, our high temperature was supposed to be 68°F. The current temperature is 48°F. The wedge is cruel and stubborn.
This was a quiet yet memorable year for tornadoes in the United States. With around 900 tornadoes on the books, here are some interesting maps that show all of the areas hit by tornadoes in 2014, from the twin tornadoes in Nebraska to storms nearly a mile wide in Mississippi.
A line of strong storms swept through southern California on Friday morning, producing flash flooding and even spawning a weak tornado in southern Los Angeles. While not as common as we see out east, California has seen hundreds of tornadoes over the past six decades. Here's a deeper look at the state's tornado climatology.
One of the biggest (and most welcome) weather stories today is that a warm-up is slated to descend over the United States during the next two weeks. The maps we use to show the possibility of above-average temperatures are being misread by much of the public, and that's a problem.
Your world is a beautiful place, most of its inhabitants aside. The wonder of looking at our pale blue dot from hundreds of miles in space will never get old. Here's a look at your world today, in all of its awesome goodness.
People keep calling these early-season snows "unprecedented" when they're really not. What is the earliest it's ever snowed, and when does it usually start snowing? Let's take a look at some data from major cities around the country to settle the question.
Here's a true color look at our home planet this afternoon; the western half of it, anyway. It's beautiful, and there are lots of really cool features you can see from space today. Let's take a closer look at our pale blue dot.
The leading edge of the Arctic air filtering into the U.S. is abrupt and ruthless—temperatures in Iowa at 4:00 PM ranged from 72°F in the southeastern corner of the state and 27°F with a wind chill of 11°F in the northwestern corner of the state. Ahh. Or brrr, depending.
The National Weather Service has developed a powerful tool that allows users to create custom weather maps that show everything from temperatures to snow totals. The tool's most excellent feature, by far, is the ability to track future weather along the path of one's road trip.
With one month to go, it looks like this year's Atlantic Hurricane Season will go down as the least active season in seventeen years. Here are five graphics that show how such a quiet hurricane season managed to be so interesting.
If you have a social media account, chances are you've seen someone share one of those beautiful streamline maps that people commonly say show "real-time" winds flowing around the world. There's just one li'l problem: nobody is using them correctly.
Earlier this year, the Storm Prediction Center announced that they're adding two new categories to their severe weather maps in an attempt to better convey the threat for severe weather to the public. They recently announced a date for the transition, sounding the death knell for ridiculous maps like we have today.
I suck at drawing, and odds are you do, too. One of the great things about computers is that they do the work for us. We have spell check to save us from those embarrassing tyops and calculators for hassle-free math. For those of us who love maps but can't draw, there are programs that create great maps with little skill needed.
With the recent spate of flash floods in Detroit and Baltimore and New York, a common question rising in the storms' aftermath asks how often certain areas of the country see flash floods. I put together some maps to show how frequently different parts of the United States experience these dangerous torrents of water.
Over the past twelve years, we've seen tens of thousands of tornado warnings across the United States. Almost every major city east of the Rocky Mountains has seen a tornado warning at some point since 2002, and the resulting maps are pretty cool looking.
This map shows the tracks of all 59,036 recorded tornadoes that touched down in the United States between January 3, 1950 and December 21, 2013. The end result looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.
The Storm Prediction Center's moderate risk for severe weather fell flat today, with most of the severe weather occurring all around the area at highest risk but not much inside of it. Busts happen. They're good for residents but bad for forecaster verification. When it comes to the "crying wolf effect," though, we're actually lucky this kind of bust isn't commonplace.
