I'm cautiously optimistic that this story in Time  is accurate. And, yes, it is the same Ivor van Heerden discussed in the "Katrina" chapters in Warnin gs .

Today is the 34th anniversary of the Big Thompson Canyon Flood. More than 140 people lost their lives when Colorado's Big Thompson River flooded after thunderstorms dropped torrential rains. It was Colorado's Centennial Weekend and the canyon was especially crowded with campers. Meteorologist John Henz, then working for a Ft. Collins radio station, tried to warn the campers and others in the canyon of the threat of flooding as storms developed over the upper reaches of the Big Thompson River. According to NOAA , more than eight inches of rain fell in a single hour. The National Weather Service at the time had a radar in Limon, Colorado, but the warning responsibility rested with meteorologists in Denver (who could not view the radar). The Denver meteorologists elected not to issue a warning. In Warnings ,  I explain how this event, along with Delta 191, and others led to the National Weather Service's reorganization in the 1990's that eliminated the dangerous separ

On December 5, 2009, I wrote  this post demonstrating that it is soot, not 'global warming' (or any warming for that matter) that has caused the recent ice melt in the Arctic. The scientific evidence continues to build demonstrating that soot is indeed the problem. Hat tip:   Watts Up With That . There is an important point here: We need to correctly assign causes and effects. We can reduce carbon dioxide all we want and it will make no difference if the problem is soot. UPDATE: Here is a graph of Arctic temperatures from the Danish Meteorological Institute with data as of yesterday to clarify the point of this posting and the comment from Van, below. The red line is the temperature. The green line is the "normal" temperature and the blue line is the melting point of ice (273°K = 32°F). Temperatures this summer are well below normal but ice is less than normal. The reason is soot melting the ice as indicated above.

Chad Cowan (www.chasethestorms.com) took this photo of the storm that produced the record hailstones in South Dakota. The picture was taken 30-45 minutes after the largest stones fell. He graciously allowed us to post it on the blog. Chad took the photo with a wide angle lens hanging out the car window while his girlfriend, Jenna Blum, was driving. Jenna is the author of the new book, The Stormchasers . Patrick Marsh has a not-too-technical meteorological writeup on his blog, here . UPDATE Saturday Morning: Photos of the "Great Hailstone Relay" drive are here .

BUMPED WITH UPDATE  2:25pm Friday:  Within the last hour, a three-automobile relay brought the giant hailstone (8" in diameter, 1.94 pounds) to the lab of hail expert Dr. Charles Knight in Boulder, CO. They are going to make a plaster cast so replicas can be made for display at several museums. Here is what the storm looked like on radar with the location of the town of Vivian marked by dot. (click to enlarge) ORIGINAL POSTING: This is one of several giant hailstones that fell near Rapid City, SD. Hailstones of this size (based on calculations at StormTrack.org) fall through the air at about 200 mph! One of many holes punched in roofs by the giant stones. The updraft in the thunderstorm would have been around 150 mph. An airplane could be torn apart by flying into an updraft of that intensity which is why pilots need to give thunderstorms a wide berth.  UPDATE:   AccuWeather is reporting that NOAA is going to certify this was the largest hailstone in U.S. history. 

Story from Oklahoma City where a cheerleader shopping at Penn Square Mall tackled a thief.  My favorite line: Yes, I was in a strapless dress. To have that much energy, she must have just come from Pops , which is just a few miles away.

Blog reader D.J. sends in this story about a train converted to a children's dental office by an enterprising dentist. Note the sign on the crossbucks. The train is now up for sale.

Thank you, everyone, from both Kim and me, for the biggest week of traffic in the history of the Meteorological Musings blog.  We have had visitors from all over the world: I also want to thank blog reader John for adapting one of our posts about the importance of weather safety to outdoor entertainment events at his blog .

On the old Route 66 at Arcadia, Okla., is Pops, a restaurant that features a gigantic (500+) selection of soda pop. Not only can you buy it to go, REAL "old Coca-Cola" with cane sugar imported from Mexico along with Dr. Pepper with real sugar, among others. you can consume it their diner with its very tasty foods. After a hot afternoon on the road, I said to Kim, "Let's try this dessert, the menu says it is big enough to share." As we were chatting, Kim's eyes widened as she looked over my shoulder and she said, "You should see what you just ordered."  Here it is: The two gentlemen in the background were laughing a us (actually, me) because lots of people order it not realizing how big it is. Needless to say, we didn't finish it. So, the next time you are in central Oklahoma and need a sugar rush, you know where to find it. Exit I-35 at exit 141. Go east on Oklahoma 66 and stop at the giant bottle of pop. You can't miss it.

Yesterday, I blogged about how Oklahoma's construction zones had nearly zero work going on. This evening, on our return to Wichita from Dallas, they were comparative beehives of activity. Almost every work zone had people working away.  We get results!

A fascinating look at how some view science -- not as a means of gaining knowledge and understanding but as a tool that tells people how to live their lives: In other words, around the end of the 1980s, science (at least science reporting) took on a distinctly authoritarian tone. Whether because of funding availability or a desire by some senior academics for greater relevance, or just the spread of activism through the university, scientists stopped speaking objectively and started telling people what to do. The linked article is fascinating and I urge you to read it in its entirety. In the post below, I use the term activist-scientist. From my perspective one can be a scientist or one can be an activist, but not both. Hat tip: Edd Driscoll

You'll recall that I've blogged about the three primary seasonal hurricane forecasters forecasting a "much above normal" season in 2010. So, far that has not panned out yet with only one named storm and nothing in sight. This is due to a large area of dust coming west from Africa which has inhibited cloud formation. That said, the water (the fuel for hurricane intensification) temperatures are warmer than normal and the lack of clouds allows the sun to continue to drive water temperatures up. The lack of storms keeps the heat in the upper ocean, available for feeding any storms. If storms occur, they could be very intense because of the hot water. So, vigilance is still called for.

UPDATE: August 2nd:  This burst of publicity just before an apparent cooling has prompted a posting at WattsUpWithThat . If you have been reading the popular media the last few days you have seen a burst of 'hot' news from NASA... from treehugger.com ...and from NOAA. Other than the obvious question ("since they only have six months of 2010 data, how can they know it is the 'hottest ever'?"), what might account for this sudden burst of publicity? Here's an idea:  Temperatures are headed down. As I explain in the "Wisdom of Inaction" post below, solar and oceanic temperature influences seem to be converging to cause a period, perhaps an extended period, of significant cooling. There is the possibility that these influences will falsify the IPCC's hypothesis that CO2 is the driving force in climate. Lower atmosphere temperatures as sensed by satellite indicate atmospheric cooling is occurring at the present time.  Courtesy, Universit

The 'global warming' hype continues unabated as everywhere warms " faster than average ." Hat Tip: Watts Up With That and Tom Nelson .

Kim is driving and I am working in the passenger seat. We are on our way to Dallas as part of the book tour for Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather. We are in something like our 6th 'work zone' along I-35. I put work zone is scare quotes because these people in these zones are hardly working. I snapped a few photos.. Lots of equipment, no one using it. Miles and miles of torn up pavement, practically no one working, plus the hazard of one lane traffic and slow travel. This very typical, bare dirt...no one working. I will be the very first to acknowledge that I know nothing about road construction, but because of the book tour, I have covered over 5,000 miles since May by car. Whether its Iowa or Oklahoma, we frequently encounter ten or twelve miles of an interstate constricted to two lanes with no one working on the other side. [We are now at Exit 42 and are entering the seventh construction zone! Not a single person visibly working in the con

Click here .

That's a great idea according to The Washington Post . I certainly agree. While you are in the area, make sure you visit the Kansas Cosmosphere , my favorite space museum. Here is what the Post  says about it: Affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, it is, in my view, every bit the rival of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.   Wichita got some other big news this week: It is now the #1 city in growth of exports due to its world-class aviation business (Boeing, Airbus, Cessna, Beech, Learjet, Hawker and others).  I'm very proud of my adopted home town and am an unabashed booster. Come and visit. You'll be surprised at all we have to offer.

While we were dealing with a microburst in Wichita, intense storms Sunday were wreaking havoc on the East Coast. It has now been determined that a tornado occurred in the Bronx. My AccuWeather colleague, Jesse Ferrell,  has details . While this was the first tornado in the Bronx in 36 years, the NYC area had a tornado just four years ago. In Washington, D.C., 132,000 homes and businesses are still without powe r and many will still be without for another two days. Fortunately, the AccuWeather Real Feel heat index in Washington, D.C. is 86°, which is lower than normal for late July.

The Wall Street Journal  has a fascinating article about a depressurize-able buried airliner that is being used to determine what foods taste best at the low pressures. Turns out that a lot of what we perceive as "bad" airline food is due to the vagaries of our senses of taste and smell being fooled by the low pressure and low humidity. One advantage of Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner is that it will fly with more humidity making the cabin more comfortable and, based on this testing, foods tastier. Note: Subscription may be required to access WSJ article. 

A few posts down, I discuss Tom Friedman's New York Times'  column about the apparent death of cap and trade. Here is another Times   column that has a different take on the subject that I think is about right. The final paragraph talks about the "wisdom of inaction." That is smart and here's why. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offers the hypothesis that carbon dioxide (CO2)is the driving force governing our climate. This is primarily based on climate forecast models. We are early in a five-year period of time when we can test that hypothesis on the real atmosphere. If those of us who believe the IPCC greatly overstates and oversimplifies the effects of CO2 on the climate are right, we should see significant cooling by 2013; 2015 at the latest. And, that cooling should last for a number of years. There are three reasons why cooling should occur: The very long solar cycle and the lack of sunspots in recent years. A number of scientists beli

I thought of that immortal line from the Coasters' Poison Ivy when blog reader Keith passed on this article about poison ivy getting worse as a result of global warming: A study published in the journal Weed Science in 2007 stated that poison ivy is getting bigger, spreading faster and producing more urushiol as the result of increasing levels of carbon dioxide, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. Keith beat me to one of my other favorite lines, Global warming -- Is there anything it can't do?! UPDATE: Anthony Watts brings another example poison ivy and global warming, this from the Field Museum in Chicago. Click here to read.

This week, the book tour for Warnings rolls into Dallas-Ft. Worth Wednesday and Thursday. I will be doing some media interviews and presenting Phantom Crashes  to the Rotary Club of Arlington Thursday.

At 6:46pm yesterday evening, a strong microburst (likely strong enough to bring down a commercial airliner, had it been at the end of a runway) occurred in northwest Wichita a few miles northeast of Mid-Continent Airport. Since these are fairly rare, I thought it might be of interest to view the microburst in several different ways: First, here it is in the radar reflectivity data (the type you usually see on TV weathercasts). The center of the microburst is near the deepest red pixel. The time is 6:45pm. A second view of the microburst comes from the Wichita Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR), an instrument designed specifically to detect microbursts, installed in the wake of Delta 191 and the series of downburst-related crashes in the 70's and 80's. Compare the location of "Wichita" on the two radar images and the freeway (Interstate 235, not labeled, but wraps around the west side of the city) on both maps to orient yourself. This radar senses the wind in g

From Tom Friedman's column in Sunday's New York Times  assigning blame for the Democrats pulling the "climate" bill. I could blame Republicans for the fact that not one G.O.P. senator indicated a willingness to vote for a bill that would put the slightest price on carbon. I could blame the Democratic senators who were also waffling. I could blame President Obama for his disappearing act on energy and spending more time reading the polls than changing the polls. I could blame the Chamber of Commerce and the fossil-fuel lobby for spending bags of money to subvert this bill. But the truth is, the public, confused and stressed by the last two years, never got mobilized to press for this legislation. We will regret it. How about putting some blame on Tom Friedman, one of the numerous 'global warming' alarmists (Al Gore at the top of the list) who have carbon footprints that dwarf those of 99% of the world's population?! This is a photo of Mr. Friedman

On Monday, August 2, it will be 25 years since the horrific crash of Delta Flight 191 at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport. I tell the story of the crash and its importance to future aviation safety in Warnings . Dr. Ted Fujita investigated the Delta crash and found that a microburst had downed the aircraft after the flight crew blithely flew into a thunderstorm. This type of wind shear plane crash or major incident occurred at 16-month intervals from 1972 to 1985. Pilots of that era were “scared safe” by the once-frequent thunderstorm-related crashes. Once those pilots had the training to avoid microbursts and the tools to assist   then to stay out of danger(the Low-Level Wind Shear Alert Systems and Terminal Doppler Weather Radar), the latter a direct result of the Delta crash, we have been crash-free for 16 years. That is an amazing scientific accomplishment. But, there are two recent studies plus anecdotal evidence that pilots are starting to take thunderstorms for gr

This photo shows the thunderstorms developing northwest of Wichita this afternoon... while this photo shows the underside of a different thunderstorm this evening in southeast Wichita.

Below, I have posted about the United 777's encounter with severe turbulence in the anvil of a thunderstorm over Missouri earlier this week. I have been asked, "what do you mean, 'anvil'?" Good question. Here is a drawing of a blacksmith's anvil. Note it is flat and wide at the top. Here is a photo of a thunderstorm (technically, a cumulonimbus cloud) with the anvil shape. We refer to the large flat cirrus top of the storm as the "anvil." UPDATE: Here is a view of a thunderstorm taken from my back yard a few minutes ago. If you ignore the building, you can see an almost perfect anvil shape.

I've added several options in case you would like to share blog posts with your friends. The "M" allows you to email that blog entry.

On July 16, I wrote about disaster preparedness. My number one suggestion was "expect the unexpected." Apparently, BP didn't as this story  (subscription may be required) from The Wall Street Journal  indicates. A critical alarm system that should have warned workers of danger aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig had been disabled before the rig erupted into flames on April 20, the vessel's chief electrician testified Friday at a federal hearing into the accident. Michael Williams, an employee of Transocean Ltd., the company that owned the rig, said the general alarm system aboard the Deepwater Horizon had been "inhibited." It was intended to automatically sound an alarm warning workers to move immediately out of harm's way. But Mr. Williams said the automatic system had been switched off because Transocean rig managers "did not want people woken up at 3 a.m. with false alarms." Instead, the rig-wide alarm had to be triggered manually—a

While I was in Orlando, a United Airlines 777 was reported to have "encountered clear air turbulence" over " Kansas ." Because I am a meteorologist from Kansas, many, many people have asked me about it. I've now done a little checking and, The plane was over Missouri, not Kansas. It almost certainly was not in "clear air."  There is a fairly detailed article about the encounter at AvHerald.com  from which the image below was taken: Above is a GOES weather satellite infrared satellite image from the route of flight. Assuming the Herald  has the time and location correct, the plane was not in "clear air." It was flying in the expanding anvil of a thunderstorm which is a well known location for turbulence. If you'd like more information about anvils and turbulence, go here . Severe "clear air" turbulence is quite infrequent in the U.S. in July.  That said, always keep your seat belt on when you are in your seat!

I will be presenting Miracle at Greensburg  and doing a book signing for Warnings  at the University of Oklahoma's National Weather Center on September 7, 2010, at 3:30pm.

This story of hikers struck and injured by lightning in Jackson Hole, Wyo., reinforces the critical nature of lightning awareness, especially on high elevations. The higher you are, the more of a target you are for lightning. Always check the forecast for thunderstorms and carry a portable lightning detector in the summer months.

When you hear someone complaining about the extent of Arctic ice (which is currently about the same as it was in 1990), you rarely hear them discuss temperatures  in the Arctic. Here is the latest temperature data from the Danish Meteorological Institute and it represents the area north of 80° N latitude. The blue line is the freezing line (273°K = 32°F) and the green line is average. As you can see, temperatures have been below normal this summer. As we have discussed previously, the primary reason Arctic ice has been less in some recent years is soot (largely from China) darkening the ice and unusual wind currents, not 'global warming.'

AccuWeather is tracking a tropical weather system over Hispaniola that will begin affecting Florida late Thursday and Friday. From Florida, the path is much less certain. It may affect the oil spill area in the Gulf over the weekend. The link will take you to AccuWeather's hurricane center with constantly updated information.

Keep an eye out if you live in the southeast United States later this week. A tropical wave is starting to show signs of development. The National Hurricane Center gives it a 40% chance of becoming a tropical depression or storm in the next 48 hours.

Kim and I are off to Orlando this week. Wednesday evening, I will be delivering the dinner address at the AON Benfield Analytics Conference. Thursday, I will present The Phantom Crashes  to the Orlando Rotary Club. I'll be happy to sign copies of Warnings  if anyone would like to bring theirs and we will have some for sale.

As I was working on the posting about disaster mitigation which included comments on the dysfunction in Washington and the mess on Wall Street (i.e., SEC, financial meltdown, Madoff, etc.) it occurred to me that little has gone right in either place since the passing of Louis Rukeyser in May of 2006. I was a huge fan of Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser  and counted on his weekly tutorials and his pun-filled good humor to help navigate the world of investing. He was and is the only person in the field of economics dubbed "sexy" by People  magazine, largely for his dapper appearance (and George Washington haircut) and his ability to make complex financial information simple to learn and understand. One of a kind, he is greatly missed. UPDATE:  Some of our readers are too young to remember the program. Here is an example of W$W right after the crash of 1987 (the edition the week before had Marty Zweig explicitly predicting a "crash" which occurred three day

With a heat index of 107°, its hard to believe these clouds (located about five miles above my head) are made solely of ice crystals.

Anthony Watts has done yeoman's work to disprove the recent claim that earth's temperatures are "warmer than ever." Highly recommended, non-technical reading. This is the entire problem with the 'global warming' debate. So many of the claims of catastrophe simply do not withstand scrutiny. 

Here is your chance to visit the Flint Hills and learn more about the history of the area. William Least Heat-Moon will be in the Hills next Saturday for the debut of the documentary, Return to Prairyerth, based on his best-selling book. Details are here . There is a video introduction to the movie at the link.

Those who have read Warnings  know that I am quite critical of the Bush Administration's response to Katrina. Now that the oil has stopped gushing in the Gulf, I can state that the Obama Administration didn't do any better, and was likely worse, than Bush during Katrina. James Carville, hardly anti-Obama, seems to agree: From CNN's "Anderson Cooper Show" CARVILLE:  The people here have been so let down. The federal government let us down.  They're killing the economy here.  People in the interior department that issue these things don't have the foggiest idea about life here, they don't have the foggiest idea about what's going on, and they have got to do something about this because the federal government is about to kill us. The problem isn't Republican or Democrat, the problem is Washington, D.C. As I write in Warnings, the culture  of our nation's capital is where the problem lies. As the insiders in D.C. say, "nothing suc

"They say the big rain drops fall down, on Broadway."   Taken looking north down Broadway in Wichita. The white streaks at the top represent heavy rain falling to earth. The Smith House received 0.33" from the storms this afternoon.