One of the defining characteristics of spring in the upper midwest is a land surface that warms up much more quickly than the many lakes do. There’s a couple of reasons for this: water itself has a higher heat capacity than soil does, sun penetrates into the lakes somewhat which... Read More

In the afternoon and evening of 23 April 2026, numerous tornadoes touched down across the Great Plains of the continental United States. The storm reports gathered by NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center show a line of tornadoes extending from central Iowa down to north central Oklahoma, accompanied by numerous reports of large hail... Read More

Islands in warm tropical seas can create convection through a combination of factors that work together to foster deep convection. A recent example from the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands during the day of Monday 20 April 2026 illustrates this. Guadalcanal is famous as the site of a... Read More

Typhoon Sinlaku (whom we introduced to you two days earlier when it was a mere tropical storm) has undergone steady and significant intensification and has now reached Category 5 status with estimated winds as high as 150 knots (170 mph). Satellite imagery of Sinlaku depicts it as a nearly perfectly symmetric eye with a... Read More