More big storms flood parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas

We’re closing out another active month for severe storms with additional severe storms. Today’s big stories are flooding and tornado potential. And like most of the month, the central U.S. is where the action resides.

Weather Watch

Southern Plains flooding. Flash flood warnings were numerous across Oklahoma and north Texas early Wednesday as rounds of storms cross the region. Another 2 to 4 inches could be widespread Wednesday in an area already saturated from recent rain. A Level 3 of 4 flood risk is up through the day for northeast Texas, southeast Oklahoma and southwest Arkansas.

Northeast Texas tornado threat. Storms to the west of Dallas this morning are aiding a flood threat around the Red River and should leave an outflow boundary somewhere across northeast Texas. As such, the Storm Prediction Center included Dallas under a risk zone for the potential of strong tornadoes later Wednesday.

The final countdown. See below.

Lightning links

At least one dead after derecho blows through the Northeast.

Pakistan may hit 120 degrees this week. It could be a global record.

Trump administration dismisses all authors of major climate report.

Will Trump's NOAA cuts affect victims of future weather catastrophes?

Weather data Wednesday

You might want to sit down — this is a Weather Retort exclusive.

It’s the first announcement of a new web site called ClimoSpot.

Fearing the inevitability of President Trump attacking NOAA and climate information (see: project 2025) … I have spent some time over the months writing Python scripts to hoard some of the stuff I cherish most.

Among that information are the historical datasets maintained by NOAA through sources such as FAA weather monitoring at airports in and next to major cities.

These data cover both the most populated cities and plenty of rural regions. In many cases, the historical weather information goes back 150 years or more.

It’s how we know what the record high for a date is … Or how much rain fell in 1928 … And, it allows us to prove it snowed a lot more in Washington, D.C. than Boston during the winter of 2009-10!

It is wholly nonpartisan, despite what analytical trends using the data might show.

My offering is simple, just a bunch of links to CSV files, for now. It’ll grow over time and perhaps help motivate others to do similar. Community — online and off — will get us to the end of whatever this path is that we are wandering.

About

Weekday morning newsletter by a journalist/forecaster. Connecting weather and climate change dots while occasionally stirring the pot.

Find this interesting? Forward it on and tell a friend!