Katharine M. Kanak, PhD

At first I thought the dust devil might have been moving in circular motion, but upon looking again, I think perhaps it is a multiple vortex dust devil. Great animation!

Monarch butterfly sitting on pink zinnia flower

A monarch finally landed and stayed still long enough to photograph yesterday. There have been a large variety of other butterflies this year too - a great butterfly year!

Gulf Fritillary butterfly on a pink zinnia

Gulf Fritillary butterfly on a pink zinnia

Gulf Fritillary butterfly still visiting a persistent zinnia today

Looks like MESH is not fully capturing smaller hail that your algorithm indicates for 2023 only, eg central KS, ne OK. Do you agree that some reporting holes are filling in since Wendt and Jirak (2021), at least based on 2023? Intriguing work! :)

Late reports in Storm Data showed a 98-mi tornado on 15 May 1980 in TX was really four or five separate tornado reports - much more consistent with F1 rating. Late reports are sometimes so important!

Floating point exception NaN

Photograph of rising incense smoke vortex rings against black background and illuminated by direct sunlight.

Photograph of rising incense smoke vortex rings against black background and illuminated by direct sunlight.

Very cool solver and visualization, Tim. Nice smoke video/solutions from @sebastianlague.bsky.social as well. I used to take photographs of incense smoke rising while illuminated by the sun. So here's a 3D challenge for you ;)

Great paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

That’s awesome - can’t wait to see your findings!

Maybe could look at MRMS MESH and see how it compares with Wendt and Jirak 2021 and see if the difference between MESH and observed is filling in at all.

Great work! Looks like 2023-2024 were definitely more intense in the Plains.

Excellent!

Took a better look on a bigger screen. Looks like straight-line dust movement (left to right) with embedded dusty updraft plumes. Maybe a larger dust devil in the foreground too. Nice imagery.

I was distracted by the dust devils and missed that the focus was on the horizon. Wasn’t sure if the features on the right were dust devils or non-rotating surface-based updraft plumes, but I see now they are dust devils. I’m not sure what to make of the flat features. Interesting for sure! :)

Plume or dust devil?

💕

2/2 and Kelly et al. (1985; MWR) who found only 4% of tornado reports had hail reports with them for 1955-1983.

1/2 A couple of older papers that support this are: Morgan and Summers (1982; Thunderstorms, Kessler ed.) who discuss the tendency to report the most severe event such that hail reports take a backseat to tornado or damaging wind reports; ...

Sorry deleted by accident. Thank you for repost! ejssm.com/ojs/index.ph...

ejssm.com/ojs/index.ph...

*to find the parcel that maximizes CAPE

I wonder if a possible method could be to start with the parcel with max theta-e in lowest 300 mb and with some really efficient code ;) check “adjacent” parcels that optimize the CAPE over the entire depth.

Max theta-e in the lowest 400 mb?

Looks like both the links you posted go to the ttu doc

Edwards et al. (2013) cite it as WSEC (2006) with reference: WSEC, 2006: A recommendation for an enhanced Fujita
scale (EF-scale). Texas Tech University Wind Sci-
ence and Engineering Center Rep., 95 pp. [Available
online at www.depts.ttu.edu/weweb/pubs/fscale
/efscale.pdf.]

Blue swallowtail butterfly on ground surrounded by green pepper plants and other plants. Butterfly is iridescent blue but appears mostly black with orange, blue and white spots on hind wings

Finally captured a blue swallowtail butterfly in a photo today.

Very nice work and really interesting! Defining an”outbreak “ is certainly not easy. Thanks for your intriguing findings and for the discussion.

Thanks so much! I appreciate your efforts 😊

Hi Nick - How many tornadoes were in your total count?

Redbud tree with pink flowers

Redbud tree with pink flowers

Redbuds in full bloom