Thea Sandmael

TORP - PHI tornado plumes with the ongoing textbook-looking supercell in northern OK

Send me an email, and I’ll give you access!

I’m sorry; fake damage reports are NOT funny

Stand Up for NOAA Research – The Time to Act is Now The AMS is a global community committed to advancing weather, water, and climate science and service.

The 2026 budget passback plan calls for eliminating NOAA Research, the scientific backbone that keeps weather forecasts, alerts, and warnings accurate and effective. This would have disastrous consequences.

Read the AMS statement, in partnership w/ @nwas.org: bit.ly/4cz2RtC

BalancedWx Special: Perspective on the NOAA budget passback A proposed sea change to the US meteorological science enterprise

Thanks to @edwardsanthonyb.bsky.social and SFChronicle for sharing the full NOAA FY26 budget passback. After a detailed reading, think it is important for people to really understand just what massive changes are planned for US weather forecasting and research.

open.substack.com/pub/balanced...

NOAA NSSL/OU CIWRO TORP tornado probabilities have been maxing out for quite a while with this storm. Extreme AzShear values! #iawx

On today’s episode of “He’s Tearing This S**t Up”—Trump plans to dismantle NOAA, shutting down climate research and weather labs.​

In Texas, that means fewer hurricane warnings, less drought data, & more risk to our communities.​

This isn’t just a budget cut—it’s a threat to our safety.

BalancedWx Special: Reports that Trump Administration plans massive cuts to NOAA Intent to eliminate NOAA Research and move space weather prediction to DHS

I wrote a post with my perspectives on the reports today about NOAA's FY26 budget passback and the implications. I will admit this was really hard to write - it's almost inconceivable to me that we are really doing this.
open.substack.com/pub/balanced...

TORP tornado probability tracks for the April 2 outbreak. Wonder how many tornadoes will be in the final count once damage surveying is complete.

And forecasters said that it still added value, even when it’s assigning low probabilities relative to storms in the rest of the country!

Love to hear that! We are currently limited to running 10 radars at a time in real time, and we base the domain on SPC outlooks, so the Plains is in focus today. In general and objectively, it’s not great in the west due to limited training data, but we did include a CA case in the testbed last year

In the last 5 years (2020-2024), the NWS Sacramento weather office has issued a total of 8 tornado warnings, with an average of 2 warnings per year.

Rare California tornado warning! #cawx

My friend in Amber, OK got some large hail today, one looks like over 3 inches. This was after about 20-30 min of melting! #okwx

I don’t think they ended up with actual tornadoes, but they did have a couple of weakly rotating storms, which is also really uncommon up there!

An interesting case where TORP tornado probabilities did not get noticeably impacted by a temporary decreasing trend in AzShear #txwx #lawx

It’s a very interesting setup!

I actually had a similar experience to yours back home in Norway a few years back after the weather service there issued a “tornado watch” for the first time.

We have enough rotation to trigger the TORP algorithm! Probabilities are low #wawx

Yes! TORP’s skillful range goes out to 160 km. I believe Vancouver BC is about 125 km from KATX.

Pretty sure this is the first time we have a real-time TORP tornado probability domain in this region of the country. Excited to see how TORP does for potential non-landspout cases in Western Region!

TORP tornado probability tracks from select radars for the March 14-16 severe weather outbreak.

This is horrible to post, but I may as well post it. We are essentially shutting down research operations in my group, which is focused on treatments for pediatric brain cancer. I’m a well funded investigator, and there’s no choice. Science can’t function without the stability of NIH

A fire burned through our Lake Carl Blackwell Mesonet site around 3:41-3:45pm. One of our thermometers measured a 1-minute average temperature of 173 F at 3:42pm. The 2 meter anemometer is now reporting 0, which indicates that it likely was completely melted. #okwx #okmesonet

Experimental CIWRO/NSSL TORP probabilities close to 100% as the storm moved through Saint Louis. Not good.

Update: it’s blown about 15 ft and fence is broken. Neighbor’s gutter was halfway torn down and bent.

Our shed just blew over in SW OKC 😳 #okwx

SPC has issued an incredibly rare Day 2 High Risk for Mississippi and Alabama. Tornado outbreak appears likely.

www.stormscale.io/spc/convecti...

I get some of my tornado and severe weather research data from this website. Does this also mean we get no new official tornado reports since Storm Data entry will be down..?