A man shot and wounded a central Texas television meteorologist in the news station's parking lot as he left the building after this morning's broadcast. The station, KCEN in Waco and Killeen, reports that morning show meteorologist Patrick Crawford was in the parking lot when a man came up to him and "exchanged words" with Crawford shortly before firing several shots with a semi-automatic hand gun.

It looks like the weather over the United States will briefly get interesting again over the next few days, and as with all interesting weather, it spells danger for millions of people. Areas from Chicago to Detroit are at risk for large hail, damaging winds, and possibly an isolated tornado tomorrow.

Heavy rainfall last week helped to alleviate some of the drought plaguing the Texas Panhandle (as well as parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico), but overall it was a drop in the bucket towards bringing the area back to normal.

Today is the 17th anniversary of the Jarrell, Texas tornado, and Kinja user and weather enthusiast Stephen Uzick has a good write-up about the incredible dynamics that went into producing this deadly F5 tornado back in 1997.

Softball size hail (4.25" in diameter) fell in Denton, Texas this afternoon. The town, about 35 miles northwest of Dallas, saw the enormous hailstones during an intense severe weather outbreak , and the pictures of the aftermath are pretty incredible.

A strong cold front moving across northwestern Texas earlier today brought with it 30 to 40 MPH winds that caused yet another dust storm (called a "haboob") that was large and dense enough to show up on both radar (above) and satellite imagery (below).

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.