The Mauna Loa beam blockage is particularly evident today…

Some absolutely insane forecast highs for next Thursday, March 19. 90°F in Fort Collins?! 80°F in Cheyenne? Is everything okay?!

Air quality in northeast and southeast CO and the NE panhandle is ridiculously poor due to the wildfire near Lake McConaughy in NE. Widespread PM2.5 values in excess of 300, which is considered a "health warning of emergency conditions" for all populations.

Update: Bidders have begun lining up to take over management of NCAR, @science.org reports. eos.org/research-and...

All 0.5 degree scans from KLOT of the supercell in ILL/IN yesterday evening. Markers show hail reports larger than golf balls and tornado reports as they happened

Definitely an eventful first day yesterday at NWS fundamentals. 3” diameter hail just to our north, a tornado watch, and plenty of lightning!

the warmest it's ever been in March in Fort Collins is 81°F. at this point, it seems like the question is not whether this will be broken next week, but how many times and by how much. 🫠#cowx

The leading fine line is a wind shift. A 2nd, diffuse fine line is associated w/ drop in dewpoint and modest drop in T. IMO 3rd fine line behind the precip is main front associated with stronger winds and much cooler air. From my back yard - 1st passes around 11:50 pm, second around 12:20 am.

Love TDWR imagery of undular bores and in this case it is right along the cold front. Also looks like another ripple in the gravity wave just behind the front.

A clear tornado debris signature southwest of Jet, OK. Not too far from the Vance AFB 88D.

Every day is caturday

An active evening along and north of the Cheyenne Ridge. A friendly reminder that spring is just around the corner! We were monitoring a storm earlier today that produced some accumulating hail (more like graupel?) on I-80 west of Rawlins. Could see it on the WYDOT cameras.

Evening views

I’m outside in 53°F temperatures on February 28 at 950 PM in Fort Collins, CO. In shorts and a T-shirt. Where is winter? The lack of moisture is also concerning…

Full panorama of the 2025 Dickens/Wellfleet LP tornado+supercell! View is looking ESE up into the mesocyclone. The RFD clear slot is visible in the upper right, and in the distance on the bottom left you can even see a bit of the FFCB. Stationary supercell with deviant westerly tornado. Perfection!

A nice halo to end the work week. #AtmosphericOptics

In KC for 2.5 weeks come the middle of March. Good food recs? Of course BBQ. I will have a car so I’m willing to travel for good food!

Current move status:

First ever AFD ✅

Not used to the wind up here - it’s noisy! Probably some 40-45 mph gusts with this squall moving through? The house is rattling!

Dramatic squall looking north and east from Fort Collins! It’s my second week at the Cheyenne office and staff have already had to deal with strong winds, snow squalls, fire weather, and convection. What an active and interesting region!

Quite the line echo wave pattern pushing across Southern Louisiana this evening with numerous embedded circulations.

It’s drizzling. On Feb 13. At 6,000 feet on the Palmer Divide. It’s also rained in Cheyenne yesterday. #NoWinter

This halftime show is 🔥🔥🔥!

One of my favorite pictures…

NSSL did a few things in 2025 www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSUA...

Aaaand another 🔥🔥

Don’t need dual-pol/CC to tell us if these returns are meteorological or not. The T/Td spreads say enough. Can confirm that this is a fire NW of Lake Okeechobee via visible satellite.

It has been a perfect week to visit Florida! 😂

Monday 8 am: Mild air is replacing the cold air moving to the east where the entire Florida peninsula froze, 40’s into southern Cuba, front now reaching northwest Puerto Rico. Kingston, Jamaica with 44 mph gusts. Cancun reached 48F. Partly/mostly cloudy, sunnier late pm, low 70’s

This is an excellent depiction of air mass modification over the NE Gulf of Mexico. Cold, continental air moving over a much warmer ocean basin, resulting in strong latent heat fluxes (rising air moving down-gradient), and hence cloud street formation.

When you’re in Florida in February and it’s warmer back home in CO than the 27°F it is here…🙃 that’s not even including the gusty NW flow.

In my newsletter this morning, I shared the experimental real-time freezing rain ice accumulation analysis developed by the winter weather research group at NSSL. This is the kind of R2O NOAA does that has clear societal benefit - and that the admin wants to curtail. tinyurl.com/43kcrhmb

Appear to be missing a data point for 1/29 12Z, but Tampa recording a 0.11" of PWAT in this anomalously cold air mass that is impacting the southern US. Daily minimum of 0.13" puts this record into perspective. More cold and wind to come over the weekend, w/ wind chills reaching teens in some spots.

After the #AMS2026 emergency town hall regarding NCAR, it is ***imperative*** that folks contact their senators and representatives. IN PARTICULAR: Maine: Susan Collins (Chair - Senate Approps.) Oklahoma: Tom Cole (Chair - House Approps.) Colorado: John Hickenlooper and Joe Neguse #SaveNCAR

Taking off my weather hat for a moment for something more important than the forecast…today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I’ve shared before that my grandparents (mom’s side) are both Holocaust survivors. Please do me a favor and read their story in this thread.

Pretty crazy how the warm nose on this sounding from Shreveport has a maximum temp of ~55°F at 900 mb, yet the surface is well below freezing. A true freezing rain sounding!

Light snow falling from the sky with clear skies overhead? Neat seeing such small and light ice crystals being advected so far upwind from the clouds I see to my north!

Purely a snow sounding in Norman (no warm nose) although likely some sublimation due to low-level dry air. Purely a rain sounding to the south in Fort Worth. Both in regions of strong low-level warm advection (strong veering winds with height). Some weak elevated instability at FWD.

Can look at our exp products of SLR www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/hmt/hmt_webp... Have a few options for rrfs

This is the GFS at 06Z Sun, showing strong isentropic ascent (40 kt flow nearly perpendicular to the isobars) across NW MS, + a stout warm nose from 850-700 mb + a sub-freezing layer below ~900 mb indicating the likelihood for freezing rain at the sfc. A deeper sub-freezing layer would favor sleet.

At the courthouse for jury duty this morning. One of the questions on the questionnaire was: “Do you believe there is any reason you cannot be a fair and impartial juror” My response: “I have no faith in our justice system. The president is a convicted felon”.

CFADs: Cat frequency by altitude diagrams

Denver Cyclone plus an evident convergence zone north and east of DIA this morning acting to locally enhance snowfall rates. Can also see the convergence via surface observations via the wind field.

Basking in the sun and bracing for the cold snap…

I encourage all who are going to AMS this year in Houston to read this excellent AFD from Cameron Batiste at the NWS Houston WFO. Impacts, uncertainties, synoptic setup, etc. Just fantastic: forecast.weather.gov/product.php?... .

Here were the latest WPC Key Messages regarding the impending winter storm and extreme cold. Each time I post these, the probabilities for Moderate Impacts keep going up.

I am glad he takes action based on NOAA forecasts