**No afternoon Weather Xtreme video this afternoon… please scroll down for the morning discussion, which is still very valid** Thanks to Jim Westland of the Birmingham NWS for this very interesting read… Back before the big tornado outbreak last weekend, it looked like we were in a tornado drought of sorts, with only 4 tornadoes [...]

Click here for presentation. Allow 2-5 min for download. Be sure to turn on your speakers. Click here for presentation. Brian Peters and I attended the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Atlanta yesterday. I was giving two presentations, and out of the whole week they scheduled mine within one hour of each [...]

A neighbor on my street and I learned to do a rain dance during our long drought. I did mine under cover of darkness. Now we need to learn a semi-drought dance. I will check with her. This morning, I did some highly unscientific weather research, 4th grade level. This is what I found, and [...]

(NOAA) It’s not like you needed me nor the government to tell you, but the drought is now officially over for practically all of the Southeastern United States. Even in Florida, the drought is mainly gone due to heavy rains last week. Compare this week’s lack of drought over the Southeast to August 28, 2007, [...]

Thanks to Jake White who shared this with us… “James, I thought you may find this study interesting and worthy of a blog post perhaps. It is a study of the presumed crash of Air France 447 as a possible result of a thunderstorm. You may already be aware of this suspected connection but not [...]

BULLETIN – EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BIRMINGHAM AL 1143 PM CDT TUE MAR 31 2009 THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN BIRMINGHAM HAS ISSUED A * SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR… SOUTHEASTERN MARENGO COUNTY IN SOUTHWEST ALABAMA… * UNTIL 1230 AM CDT * AT 1141 PM CDT…NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED [...]

Up all night working weather but I lost track of how many tornado warnings wereissued in Alabama. The latest is a Tornado Warning until 6 am for Coosa and tallapoosa County in East Central Alabama. At 5:30. the NWS indicated a severe thunderstorm that could produce a tornado. It was near Rockford, in Coosa County [...]

Was I not just on a 50-mile round trip boat ride last week? James and I went through Bankhead Lock on the Warrior River…for the video, click here. Today is another long boat trip for me, but this one is not vacation, but a part of an intensive field experiment today by my employer, the [...]

Area radars are lit up with many different phenomena this morning. Below is a still image from the Birmingham NEXRAD around sunrise with things labeled. 1. Sunrise. The radar sends out microwave energy that bounces off of raindrops, etc. This is how it detects rain. When the sun rises, it has some energy in the [...]

If you have looked at radar pictures lately (at least over the past few days) over Alabama, you may have noticed some interesting low-reflectivity (blue, less than 15 dBZ) returns at some distance from the radar. It looks a little like ground clutter, but it isn’t, because the returns are showing up at ranges more [...]