This is the probabilistic tornado and severe thunderstorm (latter defined as hail ≥ 1" in diameter and/or winds ≥ 58 mph) outlook valid from 6am Friday until 6am Saturday as forecast by the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center.  Two things ratchet up my concern when tornadoes and severe storms are contemplated:  Overnight Out of Season While very early March is technically "in season," a number of these areas haven't had any severe weather in 2012. Plus, the dynamics (jet stream strength, etc.) of this event may keep it going during the overnight hours with fast-moving (potentially less "lead time") storms.  Breaking it down: the hatched area (in this case) means tornadoes ≥F-2 intensity and/or thunderstorm-generated winds ≥ 75 mph. This far (more than 24 hours) out, those are very high probabilities (45%), as well.   So, if you live in these areas, I urge you to make sure you to conduct the following reviews: Tornado Safety Rules for Home...

The yellow counties are under tornado watches. The red polygons in western North Carolina are tornado warnings. The maroon are flash flood warnings.   There is a good chance of more tornadoes the eastern half of the United states starting tomorrow night and lasting until Saturday morning. 

From the Storm Prediction Center is here, a tornado watch is now in effect for the areas outlined in red until 8pm CST.    

Various news sources are  CNN is reporting three  ten fatalities so far in this tornado outbreak as of 11am Central time.  Drew Pelz was nice enough to note our posting of the Reno County radar at 6:40 yesterday evening led to this photo of the tornado five minutes later. That storm did minor damage. The NWS's Storm Prediction Center's "significant" (≥F2) tornado index continues above the threshold value of 2, especially over Tennessee. Keep a close eye on the weather in the region if thunderstorms approach.   UPDATE: 10:50am. Via KSDK (NBC, St. Louis) Twitter feed, here is an image of the damaging in Harrisburg, IL

These are the strongest storms as shown by AccuWeather regional radar: The tornado watches are in yellow, tornado warnings in red, and severe thunderstorm warnings in amber. The blizzard continues to rage in South Dakota with winter storm warnings (pink) east to the thumb of Michigan.  

The 5% or greater probabilities are the threshold for concern...15% is quite high. In addition, the hatching means tornadoes of F-2 or greater intensity. I urge you to monitor the weather in these regions today. Right now two tornado warnings are in effect in the Ohio River Valley.

Above is what is left of my friend (and former WeatherData meteorologist) Rodney Price's parents' garage on the south side of Harveyville, KS. His folks are OK but there were critical injuries in an adjacent home. We have reports of major damage in Branson, MO and Harrisburg, IL.   Thunderstorms are now moving into the easternmost tornado watch which is in effect for parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, including Nashville.   As of 6:11am, tornado warnings are in effect for the areas in red polygons, severe thunderstorm warnings in the amber polygons. The tornado watch is yellow on this map. Here is the "significant tornado index" (≥F2) as of 5am CST: If other factors are favorable, powerful tornadoes may occur in the areas with index values of 2 or higher. Needless to say, please monitor the weather in these areas as thunderstorms approach. I'll have an update a mid-morning.   ADDITION at 6:45am: Via Jim Sellars on Facebook, here is the debris over Branson, MO on the...

As of 2am, here are the tornadoes (in red) reported so far. There is damage and injuries with a number of these including "significant" damage in Harveyville, KS. At least one fatality has been reported in Missouri. AccuWeather has more on the damage.  Tornado watches continue through the night in the Mississippi Valley: And, more tornadoes are expected during the daylight hours in a large area centered on the Tennessee and southern Ohio River Valleys: If you live in the areas with a 5% or higher probability of a tornado, please keep up on the weather as thunderstorms approach today.  

At 8:02pm, there is a potential tornado moving toward the Flint Hills in the general direction of Council Grove, KS   a

Radar is from 7:27pm, storm moving northeast at 50 mph.  Other storms continue to strengthen west of Wichita. 

Tornado warning extended into S. McPherson, northwest Harvey, and northeast Reno Co. At 6:58, the arrow indicates the location of the tornado. It is moving northeast. Other storms are intensifying southwest of Kingman.   Confirmed tornado southwest of Hutchinson about 6:40 indicated at location of arrow.  

The radar 6:26pm shows a severe thunderstorm in Reno Co. moving northeast. Damaging winds and quarter-size hail are likely. Keep a close eye on the south edge of this storm 

Until 9pm. Keep an eye on the weather in this region.  It is possible a tornado watch will be issued into central Kansas later. 

Via WattsUpWithThat , It just gets more bizarre by the day, doesn't it? 

Another sickening "ends justify the means" defense of Fakegate from the mainstream media (in Great Britain). This is known as " noble cause corruption ." Climate science is rife with it.   In this case, we are told, it is OK to forge a document, steal others, and libel people and an organization as long as you are on the "correct" side of an issue.  Remember: The people involved in all of this -- Fakegate, Climategate 1 and 2, civil disobedience, 'Hide the Decline,' etc., etc. -- are not fringe characters. They are the leaders of the global warming movement! Given the numerous defenses of Dr. Gleick's actions, the question that increasingly occurs to me is in what other unethical activity might they be engaged for their "cause"?

Dematerialization doesn't mean vanishing when hit by a "ray gun" (from the 1950's television space serials), it means using less to produce more. This paragraph from a story in Saturday's Wall Street Journal  should give you the idea:  If the cost of, say, computing power goes down, then the users of computing power acquire more of it for less—and thus attain a higher standard of living. One thing that makes such deflation possible is dematerialization, the reduction in the quantity of stuff needed to produce a product. An iPhone, for example, weighs 1/100th and costs 1/10th as much as an Osborne Executive computer did in 1982, but it has 150 times the processing speed and 100,000 times the memory. One reason so many leaders of the global warming predict catastrophe is because they are Malthusians : That growing populations inevitably lead to starvation, shortages, etc. Yet, Malthusians have been wrong 100% of the time since the Malthus coined the term in the 18t...

Blizzard warnings (orange) and watches (green) along with winter storm warnings (pink) are in effect for the northern Plains. AccuWeather's snowfall amount forecast is below and storm coverage is here .  Farther south, there is a "slight" (elevated) risk of large hail, damaging thunderstorm winds and, perhaps, a tornado in two in the indicated areas. [caption id="attachment_7440" align="aligncenter" width="454" caption="Because of a major revision of SPC's forecast at 7am, here is the updated version."] [/caption]   The severe weather risk continues into tomorrow.

Here is AccuWeather's forecast map for the region: The National Weather Service has a blizzard watch (light green) for much of the region. AccuWeather has details on the storm here . 

According to Kansas Secretary of Agriculture Dale Rodman, agriculture will have to produce in the next 30 years as much as it has produced in the last 10,000 in order to feed our world!

...is in this presentation by Dick Lindzen to the House of Commons in England. It is so impressive that even global warming proponents are now wondering if 'global warming' is comparable to the Y2K bug , a minor problem that was greatly inflated. 

Last week, I wrote about the Los Angeles Times, a newspaper I worked with for over a decade, publishing an editorial (based on the Fakegate documents, no less) comparing people who don't believe in catastrophic global warming to Hitler . I went on to write: Every time I think the pro-global warming forces cannot go any lower, I’m disappointed. For fear of repeating myself,  Are these the behaviors of people who are confident in the accuracy of their position?  To me, this increasingly outrageous behavior smacks of desperation.  For a decade, WeatherData, Inc. (the company I founded in 1981) provided the weather forecasts and storm coverage to the  Times.  I really enjoyed working with them and met a number of great journalists. To see the  Times  fall this far is terribly sad. The  Times’  circulation is down, way down. The  most recent figures  I could find (2010) state: Circulation at the Los Angeles Times fell 14.7% to 616,606 on weekdays and 7.6% to 941,914 on Sundays. When we ...

From a few minutes ago on Golf Channel/NBC's coverage. Because this occurs under a sunny sky, it is not part of the hierarchy of tornadoes that I talk about below. 

Below, I have a posting that links to a Scientific American  piece that calls the debate between the pro- and anti-GW forces 'war.' I agree. One side is fighting with science and the other is faking documents , fighting freedom of information act requests tooth and nail in court (wasting taxpayer funds on documents clearly in the public domain), the EPA's  "scrubbing" its database of the hundreds of thousands of dollars it gave to Fakegate's protagonist (Peter Gleick), Climategates 1 and 2, etc., etc. The question some of my correspondents are asking is "why?" Here is my theory as to why so much unscientific and unethical behavior is now occurring so frequently: The Wall Street Journal  just ran a second piece written by scientists like me that are skeptical of the Gore/IPCC theory of catastrophic global warming. It is the same piece I linked to yesterday. The piece includes this graph that shows the IPCC's various forecasts (dotted lines) com...

Global warming, if it ever occurs, may make us shorter . 

Who knew? That when you replicate another scientist's results -- a basic principle of the scientific method -- you often find errors. Such may be the case of the particles that seemed to move faster than the speed of light. A faulty cable may have given an incorrect result . Now, if we can just get the 'leaders' of the global warming movement to try the scientific method to persuade their critics rather than faking documents , blocking legitimate papers from being published , and writing privately there is a "lack of warming" while publicly claiming global warming is " incontrovertible ," we'd be onto something! More on this subject here , including the growing and almost overwhelming evidence the Al Gore/IPCC hypothesis has been "falsified." And, excellent discussion and comments about global warming and the scientific method from Judy Currry's blog.  The pro-global warming "leaders" -- as a group -- suffer from a severe cas...

Jim Moorhead, "America's Crisis Advisor," interviewed me earlier this week and has the interview up on his website at: http://instantsurvivor.com/interview-with-natural-disaster-expert-mike-smith-protect-people-property-and-profits-in-that-order/ Take a look.

Worst Headline: "Tornado Forecasting Eludes Weather Scientists" in my hometown paper, The Wichita Eagle.  The headline was attached to the worst story science story of the week written by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press. The story was printed in many newspapers across the United States, including the Tulsa World , Miami Herald, and others.  Let me state -- again -- on this blog how wrong this story is: Of the 551 people killed by tornadoes in 2011, more than 99% were located in both a tornado watch and a tornado warning at the time the storm arrived!   Mr. Borenstein cites Joplin. Here is the forecast of the Joplin tornado in the form of the tornado watch: The watch was issued at 1:30pm, 4 hours and 11 minutes before the tornado reached Joplin! The watch (a forecast) further says there is a "high" probability of tornadoes and a "moderate" probability of a tornado of F-2 intensity or greater. Did things go wrong later that afternoon in Joplin? Yes. ...

Yellow-shaded counties under a tornado watch. Red = tornado warning  (meaning take cover) and amber = severe thunderstorm warning (large hail and/or 60 mph or more winds). ss

Two tornado watches in effect in the Southeast. See posting below and keep up on the weather today if you live in these areas.

There is a substantial threat of tornadoes in the Southeast today. This is the NWS Storm Prediction Center's updated (8am EST) and upgraded severe weather outlook: Let's break it down: The maximum tornado threat is 10%, which is elevated (5% considered enough to be concerned about). And, there is serious threat of damaging winds (hatched area = ≥75 mph in the strongest thunderstorms): I urge you to keep up on local weather information throughout the day in these areas. The first watch(es) may be issued this morning. 

When tornado warnings were created in the 1950's, for all we meteorologists knew, there was one  type of tornado. Now, we know there are at least five. In order, with the worst on top, here they are Supercell Squall line (aka, QLCS) Tropical storm-related Landspout Gustnado All of these are (relatively) narrow vertical columns of wind so they meet the definition of "tornado."  But, we know -- to 100% certainty -- that a gustnado lasts tens of seconds, is difficult for meteorologists to detect, and that it will never  do anything like Joplin-style damage.  So, the National Weather Service is attempting to address this with the experiment I wrote about last week that will conducted, starting April 1, at their St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield (MO), Topeka, and Wichita offices. They create three-tiered tornado warnings and allow those offices to add "a tornado is possible" to severe thunderstorm warnings. As I comment in the posting, I believe this experiment is...

There is a significant risk of tornadoes in the South today, especially in Kentucky. Meteorologists start getting concerned at the 5% tornado probability level.  So, it is a good idea to keep up on the weather in these areas. 

This blog has discussed, on many occasions, the danger of losing the electrical power grid through major solar storm or electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. I believe the cumulative threat is higher than airline highjacking for which we spend tens of billions on the TSA.  Here is a story from today's Wall Street Journal  on that topic:  The director of the National Security Agency has warned that the hacking group Anonymous could have the ability within the next year or two to bring about a limited power outage through a cyberattack. Gen. Keith Alexander, the director, provided his assessment in meetings at the White House and in other private sessions, according to people familiar with the gatherings. While he hasn't publicly expressed his concerns about the potential for Anonymous to disrupt power supplies, he has warned publicly about an emerging ability by cyberattackers to disable or even damage computer networks. Gen. Alexander's warning signals a growing federal conce...

Below, I write about "Fakegate" -- the deception involved in a phony scandal involving the Heartland Institute perpetrated by one of the leading pro-global warming scientists. Of course, most of his pro-global warming contemporaries have adopted either the "nothing to see here, move along" or the "fake, but accurate" defenses.  I've written all I care to write about this matter, but I do want to quote from Megan McArdle (hardly a global warming skeptic) that I would like the readers of this blog who are pro-global warming to think carefully about her words: Gleick has done enormous damage to his cause and his own reputation, and it's no good to say that people shouldn't be focusing on it.  If his judgement is this bad, how is his judgement on matters of science?  For that matter, what about the judgement of all the others in the movement who apparently see nothing worth dwelling on in his actions?   When skeptics complain that global warming ac...

I would like to thank Greg Agaki and WIBW Radio today for inviting me to participate in their commodity forum where we discussed issues of importance to agriculture. [caption id="attachment_7307" align="aligncenter" width="1087" caption="Question and Answer Time"] [/caption] Other speakers included U.S. Senator Jerry Moran and Kansas Department of Agriculture Secretary Dale Rodman. Secretary Rodman made an interesting point: That  agriculture will have to produce over the next 30 years as much as it produced in the last 10,000! [caption id="attachment_7308" align="aligncenter" width="820" caption="Multiple flashes fired when Senator Moran took the stage."] [/caption]