ONLY 47 COPIES LEFT: I will take this opportunity to mention that I only have 47 copies left of the book on the most expensive thunderstorm in United States history (13 billion dollars in estimated damage). This will be the final printing. If you are interested in having the most authoritative account of this extreme event I would suggest you act now. Don't miss this opportunity to own the weather story of a generation. You can order yours at derechobook.com A SECOND PRINTING

You don't need me to tell you it's nice out or that the snow is melting away. But let's talk about it! Temperatures got well into the 30s and 40s Saturday. Even t 7 pm temperatures remained above the freezing mark: Here's where the snow depth stood on Saturday morning across the Midwest: Here's the snow depth from Monday morning, after our last snow: A big change has occurred, with all of Missouri and most of Illinois losing their snow. We've still got work to do in Iowa wher

The Iowa Derecho of last August was one of the most powerful thunderstorms ever experienced in United States History. Derechos are notoriously hard to foresee and therefore difficult to give advance warning to. At daybreak the day of the storm, only a marginal risk of severe weather (1 on a scale of 5) was indicated by the Storm Prediction Center...basically garden variety boomers. By mid-morning, forecasters at SPC could see radical changes and an explosive set-up in place a

The weather has improved around the Midwest the past few days but the extreme conditions of the previous week have increased the Winter Severity Index produced by the Midwest Climate Center. In places like Dubuque, the Quad Cities, Des Moines, and Omaha the cumulative effects of the winter are now considered extreme. Below are the current ratings for some cities in my area. You'll notice in all of these summaries things were going along fine until the first of the year and th

Before we get rolling today, I wanted to share this amazing statistic from the August 10th derecho. It turns out eight percent of all the lightning that occurred during 2020 was detected that day. The National Lightning Detection Network reports 185,298 in-cloud pulses, along with 27,387 cloud to ground strokes. Electrifying! I will also take this opportunity to mention that I only have 57 copies left of my book on what is the most expensive thunderstorm in United States hist