San Angelo, Texas, Storms Cause Major Damage; NWS Office Has Communications Problem

Severe weather hammered the San Angelo, Texas, area Wednesday night, spawning at least one tornado, damaging buildings and leaving nearly half the population without power.

A supercell thunderstorm raked through the north and east sides of the city of almost 100,000 Wednesday night, said weather.com meteorologist Jon Erdman. Damaging winds from the supercell's rear-flank downdraft, with a measured gust to 73 mph at a Weather Underground station, led to some structural damage and widespread power outages.

http://www.weather.com/safety/thunderstorms/san-angelo-texas-storms-20140612

Wisconsin Tornadoes: 6 Twisters Confirmed, UW-Platteville Coach Moves 150 Children to Safety During Storms

The National Weather Service said six tornadoes hit Wisconsin late Monday night and early Tuesday morning as severe storms moved from the Plains to the Midwest.

An EF3 tornado with winds as high as 140 mph hit the town of Verona, near Madison, at around midnight Tuesday morning, heavily damaging an elementary school. Earlier in the evening, a confirmed high-end EF2 tornado hit the town of Platteville, southwest of Madison. Winds in that twister were as high as 120 mph, leaving damage at the UW-Platteville campus but no injuries.

An EF1 tornado was confirmed near Platteville Golf and Country Club, and the NWS said it identified three other tornadoes – two in Green County and one more in far northwestern Madison.

"This was a nightmare scenario: Rotation embedded in a squall line of severe thunderstorms, at night, after many may have went to sleep," said weather.com senior meteorologist Jon Erdman. "There had not been a single tornado anywhere in the Badger State so far in 2014, the latest wait for the year's first tornado, there, since 1997."

http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/madison-wisconsin-tornado-20140617

South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa Flooding: State of Emergency Declared in Sioux Falls

The same system that brought devastating tornadoes to Pilger, Nebraska, Monday night into Tuesday doused areas near the South Dakota-Iowa-Minnesota state line, leading to potentially historic flooding.

Gov. Dennis Daugaard declared a state of emergency for South Dakota on Tuesday. Daugaard also ordered the opening of the State Emergency Operations Center to monitor the effects of the torrential rains and coordinate the state's response.

http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/sioux-falls-south-dakota-minnesota-iowa-flooding-20140617

Tornado Threat High in the Dakotas, Severe Storms Pushing into the Northeast

BREAKING: We are covering the current tornado threat, including the damage aftermath within North and South Dakota, within the live blog ticker below.

Severe Weather Live Ticker: Latest Updates

All tornado warnings, along with other relevant tweets from The Weather Channel and local National Weather Service offices in current threat areas, will appear here.  

Information updates automatically; no need to reload or refresh your browser. Time stamps on the left are in Eastern time; subtract one hour for Central time and two hours for Mountain time. For complete warning information and radar links, scroll above to see the radar imagery and clickable severe weather alerts links.

http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/severe-weather-tracker-page

See Cape Cod's Coastline Change Dramatically In 30 Years

Stand on a beach for any length of time and you'll get a brief glimpse into how winds, waves and tides shape the coastline bit by bit, day by day. But thanks to NASA satellites, we can see just how dramatically those changes are when viewed over a longer time span.

Earlier this week, the NASA Earth Observatory featured a look at the Cape Cod coastline in its World of Change series, which tells the story of how the planet is changing rapidly before our eyes through satellite photos taken over years, sometimes decades – of deforestation in the Amazon, the shrinking Aral Sea and mountaintop mines in West Virginia, to name a few.

As NASA notes in its story accompanying the satellite photos, the patterns of interaction among the sand, wind and water shown in these photos have been shaping the contours of Cape Cod's beaches – known as the Nauset-Monomoy barrier islands – for more than 300 years:

"Barrier beaches and spits are constantly raised up, shifted, and torn down by the natural ebb and flow of waves, currents, winds, and tides. Storms can reshape them abruptly and dramatically. Hooks form, inlets open and close, and beaches slowly march across their back bays and lagoons toward the mainland, as if seeking shelter from the full force of the ocean. This process allows them to naturally march upwards as sea levels rise."

Florida More Vulnerable to Tornadoes Than Midwest, Study Suggests

Forget everything you thought you knew about the Plains, because the people most vulnerable to deadly tornadoes live in Florida.

Those are the findings of the Southeast Regional Climate Center, presented by director Charles Konrad II at an American Meteorology Society meeting in Colorado last week. An analysis of the last 30 years of severe weather found Florida leads the nation in the number of deaths that occur per each mile a tornado is on the ground.

Tennessee is No. 2, while North Carolina, Ohio and Alabama round out the top five in tornado deaths per mile. Konrad said he believes Florida topped the list because the Sunshine State has several reasons why tornadoes are more risky, like mobile homes, the elderly and the poor.

http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/florida-midwest-tornado-study-20140617

Weirdest Things Found in Glaciers, Ice

Earth's frozen expanses are disappearing, and fast. For instance, as weather.com's own Terrell Johnson notes, by 2030, or sooner, all of the Montana's Glacier National Park's glaciers are expected to fall victim to climate change. Since 1850, that area has seen the total number of sizeable glaciers plummet from around 150 to just 25.

However, Earth's melt does afford one unique opportunity that may otherwise be lost: artifacts lost to the annals of time are being exposed at a record pace. Making these unexpected scientific (or otherwise) discoveries remains one of the unsoiled pleasures of life. With each new discovery humankind comes that much closer to understanding existence, both past and future.

http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/weirdest-things-found-glaciers-ice-20140515

The Worst CO2 Emitters In The History Of The World

Carbon dioxide emissions are now higher than at any point in human history, and the World Resources Institute has a new report that details just how high they've risen.

April brought the first full month ever with atmospheric CO2 concentrations above 400 parts per million throughout the Northern Hemisphere, and WRI's new data shows that global emissions are now 150 times what they were back in 1850, when the Industrial Revolution began spreading across the world.

We took at the look at WRI's latest report, which explores CO2 emissions between 1850 and 2011 for every country worldwide, and names the world's biggest emitters in every decade. And the raw numbers around emissions -- especially in the last 15 years -- revealed some eye-popping numbers.

http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/worst-co2-emitters-history-world-20140529

Study: California Marijuana Farms Draining, Polluting Drought Plagued Streams

"People are coming in, denuding the hillsides, damming the creeks and mixing in fertilizers that are not allowed in the U.S. into our watersheds," Denise Rushing, a Lake County supervisor, told the Associated Press. "When rains come, it flows downstream into the lake and our water supply."

Suspicions arose 18 years ago, when water supplies in Humboldt, Mendocino and Lake Counties began running dry shortly after the state passed Proposition 15, which legalized medical marijuana usage in California and sparked demand for homegrown marijuana farms.

"We knew people were diverting water for marijuana operations, but we wanted to know exactly how much," said Scott Bauer, the department biologist who studied the pot farms' effects on four watersheds, told the Associated Press.  "We didn't know they could consume all the water in a stream."

Bauer said that the four watersheds he studied contained roughly 30,000 marijuana plants each. In turn, he estimates each plant consumes six gallons of water a day over the 150 day growing season, or roughly 900 gallons of water per plant, per growing season.

http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/study-california-marijuana-farms-draining-polluting-drought-plagued-streams-20140602

How Much U.S. Summers Have Warmed Since 1970

Nationwide, the summer warming trend averages out to a little more than 0.4°F per decade since 1970. The places warming the fastest also happen to be some of the hottest places in the country, with a large chunk of the Southwest and all of Texas warming more than 1°F per decade.

The notable blue spot in a sea of red is the Upper Midwest, where substantial parts of Iowa and the Dakotas have seen a slight cooling trend since 1970. Interestingly, that region is actually home to some of the fastest-warming states when you look at the change in annual average temperatures. Winters in particular have warmed dramatically there over the past 40 years.

Of the 344 climate divisions, which are set by the National Climatic Data Center and divide the country into climatically-similar zones, less than 10 percent have seen a summer cooling trend. In general, every state in the lower 48 has warmed since 1970 and  the most recent decade was the warmest on record for the country.

Those trends are consistent with the overall warming that has been observed for the planet as greenhouse gases emitted by humans build up in the atmosphere.

For this summer, the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) is forecasting a large "U" of areas where above normal temperatures are more likely running from down the West Coast across the South and back up the Eastern Seaboard.

http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/how-much-us-summers-have-warmed-1970-20140604

The Heat Is On: Oceans Are Heating Up For Hurricane Season

If you live on the Gulf Coast or Eastern Seaboard, hopefully you’re ready for Atlantic hurricane season, which started on Sunday, June 1. As the season gets underway, hurricane-friendly ocean temperatures in the Atlantic are ramping up, though they’re not quite there in all places just yet.

A new graphic from NASA’s Earth Observatory shows ocean temperatures at the end of May for the entire globe. For tropical cyclones, the broader label for hurricanes and tropical storms, to form, surface ocean waters generally need to be above 82°F, which is colored in red on the map below.

That helps fuel the evaporation that drives a hurricane’s convection engine and give storms a boost from a regular ol’ rainstorm into a full-fledged tropical cyclone. Temperatures below that threshold are shown in blue.

Large portions of the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific were above that threshold at the end of May, which reflects the fact that cyclone season never really ends in those areas.

However, the Atlantic is a different story. Hurricane-ready waters spread across the Caribbean to areas to the west of Africa. There’s still a fairly large area of cooler water stretching from the northwest coast of Africa across the Atlantic.

http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/heat-worlds-oceans-are-heating-hurricane-season-20140605

Climate Change Will Mean More Stress, Anxiety, PTSD in the Future: Report

The impacts of climate change on the world are often obvious, like the sight of retreating glaciers in Alaska or the slow creep of rising seas that are washing big portions of southern Louisiana out into the Gulf of Mexico.

But look at it from a different perspective, and it's clear that some of the biggest impacts from Earth's rapidly warming climate occur within us as human beings, like the sense of loss and trauma felt by hurricane survivors after everything they know – their homes, workplaces, churches, really their entire community – is swept out to sea.

How we'll handle experiences like these in a world changed by global warming is the subject of a new report, "Beyond Storms and Droughts: The Psychological Impacts of Climate Change," by the American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica, an environmental advocacy group devoted to climate change and sustainability issues.

Both organizations issued the report as a wake-up call to all Americans, whom they say can expect "broad psychological impacts" on their well-being and health from climate change.

http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/climate-change-broad-psychological-impacts-stress-anxiety-ptsd-20140610

Biggest Ocean Preserve on Earth Planned for Pacific

A massive stretch of the Pacific Ocean will be protected from oil and gas exploration, fishing and other actions that could threaten marine wildlife if a plan announced today by President Barack Obama is enacted as proposed.

The move would result in a huge expansion of the Pacific Remote Islands National Marine Monument, whose waters surround a group of mostly uninhabited islands, controlled by the U.S., that sit between Hawaii and American Samoa.

The roughly 87,000-square-mile monument, which was created in 2009 by then-President George W. Bush, would expand to nearly 782,000 square miles under Obama's proposal, the Washington Post reported.

http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/worlds-biggest-protected-ocean-area-planned-pacific-marine-monument-20140617

Oklahoma Earthquake Strikes in the Middle of Live KOCO Broadcast, Scares Meteorologist Danielle Dozier

KOCO-TV meteorologist Danielle Dozier had an extra challenge thrown her way during a weather report Monday morning in Oklahoma City.

At 5:47 a.m. local time Monday morning, a 4.3-magnitude earthquake jolted the Oklahoma City area, according to the United States Geological Survey. The epicenter was near Jones, Oklahoma, and it was the second of four earthquakes to shake the region Monday morning.

http://www.weather.com/safety/earthquake/oklahoma-earthquake-live-tv-video-20140616

Why Hurricanes are Named

Hurricane Season prompts many questions from residents and vacationers alike, most of which involve evacuation and storm preparation plans. But beyond the life-and-property preserving inquiries, the biggest question meteorologists get: how do hurricanes get their names?

Hurricane names are even fodder for comedians. Sardonic comedian Lewis Black has expressed his views of 1991's Hurricane Bob and 1999's Hurricane Lenny. Satirical news source "The Onion" suggested that a nameless hurricane would be terrifying compared to a storm named 'Earl'. In 2012, Hurricane Fabio, which did not threaten land, elicited snickers from meteorologists tracking the storm in the Eastern Pacific.

http://www.weather.com/news/weather-hurricanes/tropical-storm-hurricane-names-20130626

Hurricane Season Off To Record Start In The Eastern Pacific

According to the National Hurricane Center, that's the highest year-to-date ACE on record since 1971 for mid-June, and about six times the average for this time of year. On average, a full Eastern Pacific hurricane season sees an ACE index of 126, though 2006 is the only year that has exceeded that value so far in the 21st century.

By comparison, on the other side of North America, the ACE index in the Atlantic Basin for all of 2013 was a paltry 33, owing to the relatively weak and/or short-lived nature of many of last year's 14 storms. That was the lowest ACE value in the Atlantic since 1994.

http://www.weather.com/news/weather-hurricanes/hurricane-season-record-start-eastern-pacific-20140614

Severe Weather Forecast: Tornado Threat High in the Dakotas, Severe Storms Pushing into the Northeast

BREAKING: We are covering the current tornado threat, including TORNADOES ON THE GROUNDand damage aftermath within North and South Dakota, within the live blog ticker below.

Severe Weather Live Ticker: Latest Updates

All tornado warnings, along with other relevant tweets from The Weather Channel and local National Weather Service offices in current threat areas, will appear here.  

Information updates automatically; no need to reload or refresh your browser. Time stamps on the left are in Eastern time; subtract one hour for Central time and two hours for Mountain time. For complete warning information and radar links, scroll above to see the radar imagery and clickable severe weather alerts links.

http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/severe-weather-tracker-page

NASA Satellite Shows Two Stunning Atmospheric Phenomena off Baja California

The von Kármán vortices, named for Hungarian-American physicist Theodore von Kármán, appear as a set of eddies following each other in a line. To explain how they form, it helps to remember that air is a fluid, just like water. Just as a rock can perturb water flowing around it in a stream, an island or some other obstacle can perturb the clouds and air flowing over it.

The aptly-named glory happens when light from the sun is scattered backwards by water droplets in clouds. To an observer on the ground, they appear as a halo of rainbow colors directly opposite the sun in the sky. They are most often seen in thin clouds or fog from mountains or other high ground and from airplanes.

http://www.weather.com/news/science/nasa-satellite-shows-two-stunning-atmospheric-phenomena-baja-california-20140612

June Snow: Winter Storm in Montana, Utah, Wyoming As Summer Approaches

Mountain snow will continue through Wednesday night or Thursday morning in parts of the Northern Rockies. Winds will gust up to 30 mph and visibility may be less than half a mile at times. Snow levels will drop to 6,500 feet through Wednesday, where winter storm warnings are in place. Winter weather advisories are also posted for the Tetons and the Wasatch Mountains. 

Closer to pass level, look for a mix of rain and snow, with no accumulation expected. But if you have an early summer vacation planned for Glacier National Park, remember to bring your snow gear as more than a foot of snow is not out of the question.

http://www.weather.com/safety/winter/montana-snow-june-20140616

The 10 Deadliest Tornadoes in U.S. History

DATE	LOCATION(S)	DEATHS
1	18 Mar 1925	Tri-State (MO/IL/IN)	695
2	06 May 1840	Natchez MS	317
3	27 May 1896	St. Louis MO	255
4	05 Apr 1936	Tupelo MS	216
5	06 Apr 1936	Gainesville GA	203
6	09 Apr 1947	Woodward OK	181
7	22 May 2011	Joplin MO	158
8	24 Apr 1908	Amite LA, Purvis MS	143
9	12 Jun 1899	New Richmond WI	117
10	8 Jun 1953	Flint MI	116

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/killers.html