James G. LaDue (Jim)

It won’t be long before Trump withdraws from the UN and tries to order the UN HQ demolished.

Assuming the recon data got in this evening I’m not seeing any changes in snow a sleet probs here in Norman.

I’ve been near tornadoes with violent sounding roars. It’s a level 5 experience for sure. We do need more DIs capable of evaluating high end tornadoes without there needing to be a disaster to do so.

You may see specks and dots appear in the first part of the time lapse. That was hail falling, a few stones bigger than golfballs. Luckily they didn't hit the cameras. The tornado was rated EF2.

YouTube video by James G. LaDue 20250518 ArnetteOKstorm

Here's the Arnette, OK supercell/tornado time lapse from May 18. I haven't gotten a full tornado time lapse in quite some time, like ever.

youtu.be/Y2zl1W2PMFw

This is interesting. I hope the pub doesn’t disappear by the time im ready to read it.

And neighbor’s usage of herbicide is bad too.

I'm sure glad the radars are still running so we can see what a hailer can do to splatter the S-band radiation in all sorts of directions, whether from side lobes or the main beam. Earth is going to get close to this.#txwx

It’s going ballistic!

What is this? 100kt Vrot !!! #iawx

The thing about tools like cli-MATE and ACIS is not that the data won't exist (not yet at least). It's that they make getting the information you want so...efficient.

Can I write some code to do the same task? Sure, but not everyone can, and why should we need to when a great tool already exists?

This lab makes it possible for the NWS to forecast severe weather at the level we do. They can do much more too. If lost there’s no going back to fix it.

Here's another Friday with more anger-inciting announcements, this one being the worst.

After a super windy March, this is a nice change in #okwx. This was taken from a race hosted by the Lake Thunderbird Education Foundation. thunderbirdsailingclub.org

Check out the 75 mph gust and near 10mb oscillation in at the Ringling, OK Mesonet site!

Look at Byers gusting to 63 mph!

Third night in a row of a gravity wave flying through OK. This one’s enough to reverse a 40 mph north wind to a 60 mph south wind.

Look, a gravity wave.

The odds this has a tornado origin are pretty low because I cannot see any enhanced azimuthal shear and there is a lack of convective precip. But there's 6kft of air below the beam.

Here's an odd CC drop that looks like a distant debris signature SE of Van Wert, OH. It's along a shear zone but not associated with a significant reflectivity line. That's to the SW. But I can't rule out a tornado either.

Look upstairs and see some amazing supercell updraft signatures NW of Memphis.

Here are a few more moments

This supercell east of Cheyenne went up with surface temps in the mid 40's F. The storm appeared to have little rain, a lot of ice, and a rather prominent peak. It's got high Zdrs (much higher than anything down low), very low CCs and high spectrum widths. I've got my own idea what it is.

Look at that string of updrafts (circled in the lower right).

Here's the left split. Best anticyclonic rotation is up at 20 kft.

Is this why the only rotating storm I see is the left mover passing over Chickasha? Knock off the lowest 700m of flow and it's all negative SRH.

Thunderstorm gravity waves are flying through the Northern Lower MI peninsula. That means high wind gusts even with low 30s F temps. Cool! See the paper by Borchardt and co-authors. doi.org/10.1175/WAF-...

Oh and the overland flooding in this unit streamflow compares well with the Flash Flood Emergency.

I pulled up GR3 and the storm total rain was saturated at 5” over most of the Brownsville and Lowe Rio Grand area. It’s so extreme I thought it was an error. Nope.