Love some good data visualization.

Absolutely breathtaking view of the Artemis II launch.

Wow.

Iowa weather: All the ways Saturday's heat was remarkable Saturday's temperatures were both exceptionally warm and came very early in the year.

Tried to cover all the aspects of today’s heat, but there’s a lot to pack in: kcci.com/article/iowa...

That’s…gonna be rough for many, many people.

Map of the western United States showing March maximum temperature records set March 17–18, 2026. Dots mark cities with record highs, color-coded by temperature: yellow (74–79°F), light orange (80–89°F), darker orange (90–99°F), and red (100–106°F). Numerous records are plotted across California, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, with the hottest values in the desert Southwest, including Palm Springs (106°F), Yuma (103°F), Phoenix (102°F), and Needles (101°F). Includes NOAA and National Weather Service logos.

NWS Weather Prediction Center: The early season western #heatwave is well under way. Here are monthly high temperature records for March set over the past two days.
Future daily temperature records can be found here: www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/exper/ndfd/n...

Thanks!

Got a nice little contrail pic at work yesterday because I know it’ll come in handy at some point.

One of these is not like the other.

Excluding all the common classes every meteorology undergrad would take:

1. Fundamentals of geographic information systems
2. Hydrologic modeling and analysis
3. Rural society in transition (sociology)
4. American military history
5. Science in public (experimental comms course)

Iowa senators advance ban on ‘geoengineering,’ weather-altering activities Rep. Jeff Shipley, R-Fairfield, said, “if I wanted to, say, deploy a cloud seeding program over Van Buren County, there’s nothing in law, to my knowledge that’s currently preventing me from doing that...

Does cloud seeding exist in western states? Yes.

Does it affect weather on the scale people think it does? No.

Do contrails still appear even when these laws are passed? Yep.

The Iowa vs. Alaska is the other one that gets me.

^one of the reasons I'm tend to be skeptical about the broad conclusions we try to draw from our audience research every couple years.
People's actions frequently don't match their words.

For the nerds, the CPC is implementing the Relative Oceanic Nino Index (R-ONI) starting Feb 1. It uses the traditional ENSO calculation, but then subtracts out the global tropical average. At the current time, it makes us more La Nina-y. www.weather.gov/media/notifi...

I think content monetization on social platforms has driven much of that in the past year.

I’d guess many also feel pressured by the competition from the independent pages out there.

My FB feed is constantly overrun by those sort of posts & it’s easy to feel the need to join the herd.

Trump administration plans to break up National Center for Atmospheric Research Scientific organizations say the move is "dangerous" and would "hurt the economic health of the nation."

I actually had no idea ISU’s InTrans had current partnerships with NCAR until I put this together.

Thought that spot looked familiar.

Just finished four days of jury service.

It’s a fascinating process that I think more people should go through.

Not at all fun, but it really forces you out of your bubble.
At the end, you literally decide the fate of another human being, which is pretty sobering.

Yes to more maps + data viz. www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/p...

I visited when it was in Bettendorf several years ago - well worth it.

Aug 16: Images from @NOAA_HurrHunter and the @NOAASatellites Ocean Winds team show an intense eyewall in Hurricane #Erin This photo shows the ocean surface calm in the eye and roaring in the eyewall. For the latest forecast visit hurricanes.gov https://x.com/NHC_Atlantic/status/1956713125828325429

August 10, 2020:

One of the worst derechos in US history ravaged the Midwest. The MCS carved a path from eastern Nebraska to Michigan over the course of ~11 hours. Winds as high as 140 mph produced substantial crop and structural damage throughout Iowa and Illinois.

(1/2)

NOAA has released their official animation of the propagation of this week's tsunami. It took almost exactly one day to reach Antarctica and was reported at 0.6 feet high.

Several more tornadoes confirmed in Iowa from Friday's storms Additional damage surveys bring the tornado count to 10.

Several more tornadoes confirmed in Iowa from Friday's storms

The Guadeloupe River @ Comfort, Texas rose 12.93 feet in 15 minutes this morning. That's 10.34" per minute or an inch every 6 SECONDS. That's one of the fastest rises I've ever seen. Very hard to get away from that kind of flash flooding.

Whoa.

That's a sprite, an elusive, high-altitude electrical discharge from a thundercloud photographed by NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers from the ISS earlier today.

With reported sightings going back more than a century, this phenomenon was first photographed in 1989.

Here's my unofficial accounting of sites with newly set extreme combinations of temperature, dew point, and sustained winds. Will be looking for more sites and certainly watch as this repeats tomorrow. Please let me know if you have candidates for the list, my website has no tool for this attm :(

Drop lawn water voluntarily by 50% to reduce supply issue, water officials urge central Iowans High nitrate levels are driving Central Iowa Water Works officials to ask customers to reduce lawn watering by 50%.

Central Iowa Water Works says it currently can't use Raccoon River for water because of "near-record high nitrate concentrations".

They're now asking people to cut lawn watering by 50%.

Streamflow data shows quantity is not the problem.

Nitrate data shows quality is.

The story itself is not as problematic as the headline, but yikes.

Every year that goes by, my streaming habits gravitate more toward UK-based shows.