No, Martini Friday still happened. This was just a thought that needed to be brought to fruition.
New drink!
I'm calling it an English 75... it's a traditional French 75 but made with English lavender gin.
A definite success.
Though it may surprise East Coasters, the story of this winter was not record cold but record heat
Welcome to our world
#PiDay sunrise
... This one is nostalgic: when I started this archive in 2001 I never envisioned it lasting so long and growing like it has. It is the largest collection of radar loops in the world, with over 600 radar animations spanning 242 tropical cyclones from 36 countries' radar networks.
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- On Thursday morning (April 2), I'll be presenting "Tropical Cyclone Radar Loops Archive Turns 25" in the "Historical Perspectives in Tropical Cyclones and Tropical Meteorology" session...
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- On Monday morning (March 30), I'll be presenting "CYGNSS Coverage Statistics of Tropical Cyclones" in the "Satellite Technology for Tropical Cyclone Research and Forecasting" session. I have been working with the CYGNSS team since early 2013.
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The AMS 37th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology is coming up in three weeks. It will be my 12th time at this biennial conference (starting in 2004), and 3rd time attending it in San Diego.
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@amstropical.bsky.social
New? I used to do this 40 years ago when I was a weird young kid. I'd drown bees for hours, and quickly learned that once out of water, they'd gradually recover and be fine. 🤷♂️
The Gulf of Mexico is running a severe fever... it's the warmest it has ever been for this date. 🥵
COMBINED, the length of "winter" (defined here to be the span between first and last freezing dates) would be a record-shatteringly brief 84 days... for context, the current record shortest is 120 days. Even in the modern-day climate, the odds of having such a brief winter are 1-in-4800!
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Furthermore, the record-latest first freeze of the season was just set last Fall, on November 30, 2025. It broke that record by 8 days.
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As of today, the last freeze in #Albuquerque was on February 23. The record-earliest last freeze is March 6 (set in 2004). If February 23 sticks, it would break that record by 11 days. Although there still could be another freeze in the coming weeks, it's not looking likely.
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Things are waking up...
💰💲
The number of retired names is trending upward.
Primarily, there are simply more people and there is more stuff in harm's way now compared to several decades ago, so the same hurricane is more likely to cause more problems today.
bmcnoldy.blogspot.com/2026/03/100t...
Melissa is retired as a hurricane name after its disastrous trek through the Caribbean. Thanks to @bmcnoldy.bsky.social for the brilliant trivia on hurricane names. His blog post is here:
bmcnoldy.blogspot.com/2026/03/100t...
www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...
Since the practice of retiring storm names is so subjective, the statistics presented here are not simply a reflection of what's happening in nature -- there is a significant human component to it. And even the human component has components to it.
bmcnoldy.blogspot.com/2026/03/100t...
@wmo-global.bsky.social
Full blog post on storm naming and retiring:
bmcnoldy.blogspot.com/2026/03/100t...
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In the modern era of naming Atlantic tropical cyclones (since 1979), 72 names have now been retired. The 2025 season used List V, which was first used in 1983 and every six years hence. With Melissa's retirement, it now leads the pack in terms of the number of retired names from a list at 15.
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During its annual meeting taking place this week in Mexico City, a hurricane committee within the World Meteorological Organization decided that just one name would be retired following the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season: #Melissa. Melissa is the 100th retired storm name in the Atlantic.
So the JF (missing M) average is already -0.76... there will definitely be a big change in the JFM value!
Hmm... the JFM value could be a pretty big warming jump.
February's sea surface temperature data are in (ERSST v6), and here's the latest on the Relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI):
After a brief blip below -1.0°C, it has come back up to -0.92°C, perhaps signaling the beginning of the end of the current La Niña.
bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/roni/
The lunar eclipse at its peak (~4:30am) with our house in the foreground.
Bernalillo, NM 📍
At 4pm today, #Albuquerque reached a high of 80°F...
That is the new record-earliest 80° day by a huge 7-day margin, AND, it's a new record high for the date (previous record was 76°).
Those two records go back to 1989 and 1904, respectively.
Time for the #Spring tablescapes! (and ironing a runner aparently)
The wind swath is generated by a parametric model that I wrote that accounts for the observed track, intensity, radius of maximum wind, and radius of tropical storm force wind. I apply a basic 30% reduction of wind speed over land (that's a bit too generous over rough/mountainous terrain though).
