What is poor practice during Hurricane season is also poor practice in Winter Season. Do not share deterministic models forecasts >5-7 days out. Snowfall maps are an especially poor choice of model graphic to share with much lead time. My 2️⃣🪙

There is a reason why most (unfortunately I can’t say all) #meteorologists don’t show extended range ensemble forecasts for a reason. Even if a disclaimer like “this is not a forecast” is given, the forecast is still being shown and could be misinterpreted as such. 😒

The National Hurricane Center has put together a 2025 Verification Preview. Covers a prelim view on seasonal track, intensity, & genesis 🌀forecasts. Also touching on rapid intensification forecasts & Melissa which was the most impactful storm of the year. URL: www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/NHC_Veri...

I've already watched The Devil Wears Prada and Miss Congeniality and am now onto Clueless on this long flight. I refuse to watch anything serious 😂

A horrific accident early Saturday morning left a car in the side of an NWS office and the office relying on the NWS service backup system. Service backup is important in situations like this - but also is being increasingly used due to NWS staffing and infrastructure issues. tinyurl.com/4txuyhbz

That’s a lot of intense hurricanes over the past 5 years 😵‍💫 We added 4 more to the list this year, #Erin, #Gabrielle, #Humberto, & #Melissa.

Ever feel like your town gets more nighttime tornadoes than others? Here's a map of tornadoes by time of day (nighttime tors are plotted on top of daytime tors to stand out). I feel for you Tulsa, Jackson, Birmingham, Nashville...

Possible goofballs in northwest Tennessee

What was the weather like on your birthday? Now you can find out! During the shutdown, I forced myself to stay agile in data science tech, like AWS, Google, and Open AI. I made a notebook that gets weather for the day/location of your birth, using multiple NOAA sources. github.com/jjrennie/bir...

My favorite four from Tuesday night ❤️

you know what’s extra crazy about this photo… this is the view looking SOUTH almost the entire aurora arc is SOUTH of Great Falls, MONTANA

Absolutely insane.

Views of the Aurora Borealis from NWS Seattle!

Spectacular auroral display - 7:15-7:30p MT from the north end of Erie, CO.

Sometimes the best events are the unexpected ones. The green embedded within the reds/pinks was the best I’ve ever seen. From Lafayette, CO.

Seeing the aurora from the office wasn't on my to-do list for tonight. Absolutely wild that it was viewable all the way down in Mobile. 🤩

Day 40 of the shutdown, that’s 2 missed paychecks and part of a third. Federal employees (including my colleagues at the National Weather Service) continue working without knowing when they’ll be paid, or are furloughed. If you know someone affected, please check in on them. #GovernmentShutdown2025

I did a post this morning talking about the science of how Doppler weather radar could be used to monitor the impacts from the tragic UPS crash, and how these same concepts can help improve our readiness and response to other non-weather threats. tinyurl.com/55f2cuu3

A nearly one-week animation for Hurricane Melissa with infrared (IR) imagery on the left and its maximum wind speed (intensity) evolution on the right. The animation briefly pauses at landfall in Jamaica. IR images extend about 600 km from the center of the storm to illustrate its shape evolution.

NOAA Hurricane Hunters going through this 👇 to collect valuable scientific data to help forecast Hurricane #Melissa. 🧪

Inspired by Brian's chart, I investigated how much time North Atlantic named storms spent at hurricane and at major hurricane strength during 1966-2025. Blue = proportion for "hurricane time" (category 1-5). Orange = proportion for "major hurricane time" (category 3-5). More details in alt text!

Annotating a long 3+ day loop of #Hurricane #Melissa from Kingston, #Jamaica radar. 2️⃣ periods appear where an eyewall replacement cycle, #ERC, looked underway. In both cases, inner eyewall stayed intact & outer bands merged, resulting in a larger eye & strengthening after. A remarkable evolution 🌀

NOAA’s hurricane research division staff has been cut from 52 in 2020 to 28 in 2025, almost a 50% cut. They’ve resorted to using volunteers to man the critical radar and dropsonde stations on Hurricane Hunter flights. Senseless cuts in an era of climate change making the strongest storms stronger.

Alrighty, ready to see something really cool? (and maybe a little nauseating) The evolution of Hurricane Melissa's mesovortices at peak strength.

Saw something very similar after Hurricane Ian in 2022. New NOAA-funded research published in March found this sort of upwelling from strong hurricanes (causing the aquamarine color) and engorged river runoff stimulate phytoplankton blooms, leading to severe red tide outbreaks.

Multi-panel view of the last few days of Hurricane Melissa: ↖️ GOES-19 infrared brightness temp ↗️ GOES-19 visible satellite ↙️ Hurricane hunter planes & flight paths ↘️ Recon-derived flight level wind swath ⬇️ Estimated minimum pressure from recon dropsondes

Remember when social media was a useful tool for assessing damage post-disaster, instead of having to fish through fake photos made with AI garbage? That was nice.

Have to say that I agree with Kim here. We obviously are loading the dice with warming SSTs toward systems like Melissa to get more intense - but AFAIK the jury is still out on whether the atmosphere will actually produce more frequent/intense TCs. And I don't see the comms benefit of a "cat 6."

Thanks to some vigilant friends out there, I have a nearly-complete 87-hour radar loop of #Melissa 's approach to #Jamaica. The loop abruptly ends when the radar is lost (either loss of communication with it or loss of the actual structure). bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/radar/

One factor that supported Melissa reaching this record: an Argo float southeast of Jamaica shows a dramatic decrease in upper-level ocean temperature before (18 Oct) and after (28 Oct) the storm. My heart goes out to the folks in Jamaica facing this powerful hurricane's numerous hazards today. 💔

I wish I could like this quoted post 👇 numerous times! Expect plenty of disinformation on social media. Be careful what you share. #Melissa

#Melissa's landfall intensity of 185 mph/892 mb ties it with the Florida Key's Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 as the record minimum pressure of any TC making landfall *anywhere* the NATL basin. I feel for the residents of #Jamaica 😞 Zoomed in G19 visible meso loop courtesy of @cyclonicwx.bsky.social

5pm EDT Oct 27th Key Messages for Category 5 #Hurricane #Melissa: #Jamaica: Remain in your safe shelter & do not venture outside. Catastrophic, life-threatening flash flooding & numerous landslides through Tuesday as Melissa's core moves ashore. hurricanes.gov

From a crewmember on yesterday's Teal 74 mission into now-Category 5 Hurricane #Melissa. As clear of an eye as you will see in the Atlantic basin.

For those who are curious: Some of the major findings of disaster research over the past half century are that looting and panic are not major factors in most disasters. However, imagining that they will happen greatly hampers response and recovery.

10/27 5am EDT: #Melissa has strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane with 160 mph winds and a 917 mb central pressure, confirmed by the Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters. Conditions in #Jamaica will rapidly deteriorate later today and tonight. See hurricanes.gov for the latest details.

I've seen a lot of dropsondes over my years, and a peak wind of 210kt - even at the top of/just beyond the boundary layer - is wild to see. Might be up there in the ranks of all-time strongest dropsonde-measured gusts as well.

"The NOAA aircraft left the storm early after experiencing severe turbulence in the southwestern eyewall." These men and women are not being paid due to the US government shutdown. Not to mention that according to AOML's director emeritus Robert Atlas, they are down 40-50% staff. #Melissa

Thank you National Hurricane Center, NWS and flight crews working to warn us about #HurricaneMelissa even as the government remains shutdown

After fixing a week-long backend issue, I added Google's DeepMind (GDMI) to my tropical cyclone models site's (uwm.edu/hurricane) automated real-time verification suite. Pictured below is for #Melissa. Caveat: this is not a matched verification, so the samples differ between models.

Thu 4 pm: The first rain gauge exceeding 300 millimeters of rain caused by #Melissa (starting Tuesday) is WeatherFlow station (Tempest instrument) no. 132600 located in Santo Domingo near Avenida Independencia in Jardines del Sur. Total 305.4mm = 12.02". Excessive rain will continue.

“Getting hit by a hurricane is never good. But getting hit by a hurricane that’s not moving is so much worse.” www.scientificamerican.com/article/hurr...

For federal employees, our first full missed paycheck will occur this weekend. If you know one, do what you can to help them out if they need it. Some of us have significant others who work or other circumstances and will be okay. But for many, things are about to get very tight.

The Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disaster dataset is back and now at @climatecentral.org! Through the first half of 2025, there were 14 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters across the United States, costing $101.4 billion. 1/2 www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...

A new webpage for systems that cause very heavy rain/flooding but are not considered TCs has been developed. It’s basic, and a start. www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/rot...

And just like the other U.S. Category 5 hurricane landfalls, Michael was also only a tropical storm three days before landfall.

Seven years ago today, Hurricane Michael continued to intensify as it headed north toward the coast. It made landfall near Mexico Beach FL with 160mph peak sustained winds, making it the 1st Category 5 landfall in the FL panhandle and only the 4th in U.S. history.

Damn! What a story! Check out the 🧵 in the quote post below.

It took an extra day from what I wrote about Sunday, but the confirmation of Dr. Neil Jacobs to be NOAA Administrator finally happened this evening. balancedweather.substack.com/p/noaa-has-a...

Most flood fatalities occur in vehicles. It only takes 12in of water to sweep a car away. Small decisions like turning around, not driving through a flooded roadway, around barricades, & delaying travel until conditions improve, can make a big impact. Turn Around, Don’t Drown.