"Smoke Bomb" Might Have Saved Vermont/Northern New England From Widespread Severe Weather

My sister in Shrewsbury, Vermont sent
me several photos of storm damage
in that town. Here's one showing a 
large uprooted tree. However, the
storms weren't as widespread as 
forecasted, likely due to the 
thick wildfire smoke in the air

 We wake up this morning to find our big storms we were supposed to get last night didn't happen to the extent everyone was worried about. 

There were some strong storms in the Northeast Kingdom during the evening. And a collection of supercell thunderstorms  swept from northwest New York through south central Vermont early this morning.  Hail up to the size of baseballs hit St. Lawrence County, New York, and a roof was blown off a house there. 

In Vermont early this morning, tree damage was reported in place like Brandon, Pittsford, Orwell and Shoreham. where several large trees were snapped off. In Shrewsbury, numerous fallen trees blocked town roads and the power was out

 Trees blew down between Springfield and Weathersfield, blocking both northbound lanes of Interstate 91.  One southbound lane was also closed. Southern New Hampshire also had some storm damage. Parts of the region had a big lightning show. 

This wasn't the big scary storm outbreak we were expecting.  That's a good thing, Far fewer of us are picking up the pieces than we feared. 

However, that things didn't get as wild as forecast is frustrating for the public.  Judging from social media, people were genuinely scared at yesterday's forecast.  A small hint of fear is good. It gets people to take precautions. But people were worked up. Then, in many cases, nothing happened, which leaves people saying, "What the hell?"

 Of course, people were told that not everyone would be hit by severe storms, it would just be a minority of us. But that gets lost in the hype. 

But still, as noted, this outbreak of severe weather fell well short of forecasts. I'm not blame the meteorologists. This was about as tough of a weather scenario to forecast as you can get.  And I'd suggest the wildfire smoke really threw a wrench into the severe weather forecasting. 

SMOKE

The science of factoring smoke and climate change into day to day forecasts needs work.

The sky was a sick yellow over St. Albans, Vermont
yesterday morning because of wildfire smoke.
The smoke made severe weather forecasting even
more challenging, and probably reduced the
number of severe storms in the region. 

As soon as we got up yesterday, we knew something was awry. There was a lot of smoke out there.  Fires burning in northern Minnesota and Ontario really smogged us in. 

We're now having another smoky summer. Climate change has encouraged more fires due to hotter weather and in many places, drier conditions. 

Since the problem is newish, I don't think the computer models handle smoke forecasts well. Especially since the amounts of smoke the fires belch out changes often and unpredictably. So sometimes we're surprised by the haze and pollution. 

It gets worse. Meteorologists and other scientists don't have a great handle on how wildfire smoke affects thunderstorm development, especially when wildfire behavior changes abruptly.  We saw that yesterday as meteorologists struggled with whether the smoke would squelch storms or not. 

During a live Facebook event last evening, National Weather Service meteorologists in South Burlington said they doubted the smoke would interfere much with storm development. Meanwhile, at NOAA's Storm Prediction Center,  NWS meteorologists issued a statement saying that while there was a very good chance of severe storm development in northern New England, widespread wildfire smoke and clouds were teaming up to inhibit storms from firing up.

This morning, responding to a question from a person on Facebook, the National Weather Service in South Burlington had a great explanation:

"The thick smoke layer was a big wildcard yesterday. Turns out, the smoke reduced instability just enough that the severe storms weren't as widespread as anticipated. Given the recency of the wildfires in southwestern Ontario  - which was the primary source of the smoke - it wasn't incorporated into the model solution very well."

In the words, the fires blew up so quickly that the computer models couldn't easily feed that information into the forecast they were spitting out. So the forecast was off.

Wildfire smoke is bad, as Captain Obvious would tell us, but it might have helped us last night by limiting storms. 

More research is needed to help us understand how wildfire smoke and thunderstorms interact. Also, we need science on how smoke affects temperature forecasts. The thickness of the smoke yesterday was unexpected, and made us cooler that we thought it would be.  The forecast high in Burlington yesterday was 97 degrees. It only made it to 88.

Smoke wasn't the only thing that created fewer storms than feared. The cold front descending from Quebec was a bit of a slowpoke, coming at us later than forecast

LOOKING AHEAD

You can tell by looking out your window that smoke is still a problem here in Vermont and a lot of other places today. An air quality alert is in effect for New York State. I imagine Vermont officials are considering it. But the bulk of the smoke is aloft.   

Some of it is down here where we breathe, so the air isn't great. It's just not as awful as it can get. Air quality was moderate across Vermont this morning, though it was flirting with "unhealthy for sensitive groups."

Northern Vermont will tend to clear out later today, but southern areas are forecast to stay socked in. Smoke will make another run at us tomorrow. 

There is a low chance of showers and weak thunderstorms today, though the Storm Prediction Center has the Northeast Kingdom in a marginal risk for severe storms. This isn't a huge threat at all, but there could be an isolated strong storm today up there. Don't hold your breath on that, though. 

Today will be warm and breezy with highs up in the 80s. 

Tomorrow

A reinforcing cold front should come through tomorrow, with a new batch of scattered showers and thunderstorms. They will be hit and miss, and the thunderstorms should be pretty much garden variety. Rainfall will be generally light, which is too bad as many of us could use a nice soaking

Wildfire smoke should make another run at us. It'll reduce air quality again. It will also make it more difficult to forecast how widespread the expected showers and storms will be. 

Friday

A nice one, as it looks now. Sunny, dry, with highs in the 70s to around 80. That will make it our coldest day since late June. I don't exactly think we'll be shivering in those temperatures, though. We still have to keep an eye on wildfire smoke. It's a little too early to figure out if that will be a factor on Friday. 

Weekend.

Looking unsettles with rain chances both days. This could change, but Sunday looks like the better of the two days. Fingers crossed, the showers might move out of Vermont early in the day Sunday to reveal increasing sunshine. The storm causing the showers will have to move just a bit faster than forecast to accomplish this, however.

Critical Hurricane Forecast Tool To Stay Active After All

Visible satellite view of Hurricane Milton, which
grew explosively in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
At the last minute, the U.S. Defense Department
reversed a decision that would have crippled
nighttime monitoring of developing hurricanes. 

In a rare, wise move from the U.S. Defense Department. they've reversed a recent decision to end satellite monitoring that is crucial to forecasting hurricanes and other dangerous weather. 

That move in June to end the microwave satellite monitoring technology created outcry among meteorologists because they said ending the monitoring would hamstring hurricane forecasting, just as the tropical storm season was getting under way.

Apparently, the pressure from hurricane forecasters and others worked. 

Per the Washington Post:

"....officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday that they now expect 'no interruption' in the data their meteorologists received through what is known as the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, which includes microwave-based observations that reveal storm activity even through the cover of darkness."

The Defense Department was vague about the reasons behind the original decision to shut down the satellite monitoring, hinting at security concerns or a need to replace equipment. 

WaPo continues: 

 "'But after feedback from government partners, officials found a way to meeting modernization goals while keeping the data flowing until the sensor fails or the program formally ends in September, 2026,' a Navy spokesperson said in an email."

The reference to September, 2026 stems from the U.S. Space Force plans to replacing existing satellites with new ones. The first began operating in April but doesn't appear ready yet to do the microwave based observations, at least for storm forecasting. Another satellite should begin running in 2027.

Meteorologists were relieved at the late breaking news. 

 "Some good news for a change! We will keep a critical source of microwave satellite data going for at least another year, or until the satellites, which are already operating 15 year past their expected lifetime, fail," said Dr. Jeff Masters on Bluesky.

There's plenty of satellite data out there to monitor hurricanes during the day. A visual assessment of the clouds swirling around a growing hurricane can offer some of the clues as to whether the storm is strengthening and by how much and where the danger is heading.

The microwave data that almost went away is crucial to head off what hurricane forecasters call "sunrise surprises."

Under the cover of darkness, hurricanes sometimes explosively strengthen, catching people off guard who were expecting a relatively weak hurricane and instead facing a monster, Climate change seems to have increased the frequency of these exploding hurricanes. 

The microwave data allows meteorologists to catch these strengthening trends early, allowing them to quickly adjust forecasts and warn people in nearby coastal areas. 

"The last-minute move averts a crisis for forecasters who rely on the data to predict dangerous and potentially deadly episodes of rapid intensification and their computer models that use data from these microwave imagers to predict the movement and intensity of hurricanes," Michael Lowry, a former National Hurricane Center scientist, wrote on Substack. 

 We are just getting into the heart of hurricane season.  While no hurricane threats are looming now, it's inevitable that we'll need to carefully watch the Atlantic for these dangerous storms late this month and on into September and October.  

Hurricane Forecasts To Suffer Due To Trump Defense Department Change, Could Endanger Lives

Satellite view of Hurricane Beryl last July.
The Defense Department is taking away
crucial satellite data that would reduce
the accuracy of what until now has
been excellent hurricane forecasting, 

 The U.S. Department of Defense has inexplicably announced it would end providing some  satellite weather data, leaving meteorologists without crucial information about hurricanes that will loom over the Atlantic Ocean and potentially threaten land. 

This could lead to inaccurate forecasts, or less lead time to warn coastal residents threatened by hurricanes. 

Per NPR:

"For more than 40 years, the Defense Department has operated satellites that collect information about conditions in the atmosphere and ocean.

 A group within the Navy, called the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center, processes the raw data from the satellites, and turns it over to scientists and weather forecasters who use it for a wide range of purposes, including real-tine hurricane forecasting and measuring sea ice in polar regions."

The Department of Defense out of the blue announced last week that they would stop providing that data as of June 30.  After an outcry, they graciously offered to continue to provide the data through the end of July. 

This data is critical for hurricane forecasting, so waiting to end the program at the end of July doesn't help much. That's because hurricane season peaks in August and September. The most frequent, and most ferocious hurricanes tend to occur in those two months. 

This whole mess has left people speculating why the data will stop being available. Again, per NPR:

"'It's not an issue of funding cuts,' says Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a federally funded research center in Colorado that has lied on the soon-to-be-terminated Defense Department data to track sea ice since 1979. 'There are cybersecurity concerns. That's what we're being told.'"

I'm suspicious, as I usually am with anything involving the Trump administration. 

Information from the Snow and Ice Data Center shows that climate change is reducing the amount of sea ice in the Arctic. The Trump administration is hostile to the facts of climate change.  Perhaps they're trying to block data that contradicts their decidedly non-scientific view. 

NIGHTTIME MONITORING 

The data we'll lose is through using Defense Department satellites to observe storms like hurricanes at night. Visible satellite data is useful during the day. Much less so at night. 

As the Washington Post explains:

"....by observing microwave radiation that emanates from Earth's surface - and the ways it interacts with water - scientists can detect where and how intensely water is distributed. It lets them see where clouds are what the structure of a storm - such as its eyewall and wind patterns - look like."

After losing the Defense Department microwave monitoring, we'll still have some microwave monitoring from a satellite mission jointly operated by the United States and Japan. But those atmospheric scans are infrequent, so we won't have enough real time night data on rapidly evolving hurricanes.

The result will be what is known as "sunrise surprises."  Back before microwave data was available, meteorologists would discover at dawn that a hurricane has abruptly changed strength and direction overnight. In short, these scientists would discover that a hurricane isn't in the spot where it's "supposed" to be, and perhaps it has grown from a nothing burger to a monster. 

That means the public won't have as much lead time to get ready if a hurricane suddenly decides to strengthen and take aim at a coastal city instead of harmlessly curving out to sea as forecasters might have presumed the evening before. 

HURRICANE SURPRISES

This is particularly dangerous if the unexpected shift happens when the hurricane pulls its overnight shenanigans near the coastline. 

Destruction from the Great Long Island/New England
hurricane of 1938, which took the region by surprise.
We don't want to go back to the days when
hurricanes surprised us. 

This whole Defense Department move will be a throwback to the old days when hurricanes took us by surprise. A classic example goes way back to 1938.  

Back in those days, weather forecasting was not nearly as sophisticated as it is today. In September, 1938, meteorologists were aware of a strong hurricane off the southeast U..S. coast. They believed it would head northeast, and remain far enough offshore to not cause harm.

Instead, the 1938 hurricane slammed into Long Island and New England, leaving a trail of devastation that killed at least 690 people and caused $400 million in 1938 dollar damage. (That would be more than $9 billion in 2025 dollars).  

Granted, we have other tools nowadays besides nighttime microwave monitoring that would  help prevent such a tragedy. But still, do we really want to risk surprise hurricanes like this?

These days, climate change is making hurricane monitoring more important than ever, as a warmer atmosphere is altering the behavior of these storms. 

 Per Washington Post:

"Many scientists have said the microwave data is more valuable than ever as more hurricanes are undergoing rapid intensification, in which they transform from tropical storms or low-end hurricanes into major Category 4 or 5 storms within a matter of hours - often just before making landfall."

I guess the Trump administration figures that looming dangerous weather is also none of our business. 

As I noted as recently as Monday, the Trump crew has cut back on NOAA and the National Weather Service so much that forecast offices are severely short staffed, and needed data to make accurate weather forecasts has become increasingly spotty as a result.  Hurricane hunter flights might well be reduced as well due to cutbacks, taking away even more crucial storm data. 

WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION SAYS

The Navy did not return media inquiries regarding this issue.  The Trump administration never explains what they're doing anyway.  Apparently, it's none of our business what our supposed government does. 

WaPo says that NOAA spokeswoman Kim Duster dismissed the microwave data as "a single dataset in a robust suite of hurricane forecasting and modeling tools" that include satellite data (which doesn't work as well at night) and ground based weather stations and buoys (which are very sparse out in the regions where hurricanes develop) and weather balloon data (which are launched less frequently now due to DOGE cutbacks at NOAA).

The hurricane season has just begun.  So far, we've had two, brief, weak tropical storms that were either harmless (Andrea out in the middle of the Atlantic a little over a week ago) and Barry, which caused minor flooding in northeastern Mexico on Sunday).

Much stronger tropical storms and hurricanes are inevitable as we head through the rest of the summer and into the autumn. 

During last year's busy hurricane season, I was stunned by how accurate the forecasts were for those powerful storms, and how well warned people in the hurricane paths were. Even so, these hurricanes  managed to kill scores of people and cause billions of dollars in damage.

Now imagine a scenario where the warnings give little lead time and are not as accurate as they've been in recent years. That's what we might well be faced with in the coming months.  

More Bad News, And A Glimmers Of Good News, Regarding Foolish Trump NOAA Job Cutbacks

Bad consequences are starting to emerge
from the Trump administration's firing
of hundreds of NOAA employees.

The Trump administration's destruction of NOAA and the National Weather Service, along with so many other necessary federal entities, continues apace.  

Obviously, we'll focus on NOAA and other weather and climate entities here, since that's the subject of this here blog thingy, so we'll give whatever updates we can.

I'm saying "whatever updates we can," because everything the Trump administration is doing is chaotic, on again, off again, just going along with the whims of the moment. 

Kind of like a regular weather forecast, what will happen next with Trump and Elon Musk and NOAA and NWS is subject to change. But of course more unpredictable than the weather. 

Speaking of which, I have more evidence that the weather itself will get more unpredictable, thanks to some emerging practical effects of the government slashing. 

The National Weather Service offices in Albany, New York and Gray, Maine this past week announced they are suspending some weather balloon launches due to lack of staff. 

Usually, the National Weather Service launches weather balloons twice a day from 100 sites. These balloon launches take detailed weather measurements through multiple layers of the atmosphere. This data is fed into the computer models that guide weather forecasts.

The fewer balloon launches, the less data goes in, so the accuracy of the computer forecasts goes downhill. 

Meteorologist Mallory Brooke, writing on Facebook, explained it this way. 

"Weather balloon launches are critical in understanding what's happening in the atmosphere. Weather isn't created on the ground, it's above our heads! These cuts will have huge implications on forecasting, data accuracy, reliability, and ultimately knowledge of what's coming our way. AI *cannot*  replace this --- this is the core of how our computer models are initialized and run. 

It's like trying to bake a cake but you're going to guess what temperatures to set the oven at. Doesn't usually work out well. These are sad days for the science community as a whole."

Balloon launches were previously canceled up in Alaska, which is bad because there's already a dearth of data from the far north, which is often a weakness in computer models, This will just make it worse. 

MORE FIRINGS CONFUSION/FEARS

There's been conflicting reports of whether some NOAA employees that were fired under Elon Musk's DOGE hatchet firings were reinstated or not.

An unknown number of some probationary employees -  individuals who have worked for their federal agency for less than year - have been reinstated. For instance, three meteorologists let go from the Boise, Idaho National Weather Service office reportedly have their jobs back. 

Also, the building housing the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma appears to be off the closing list, at least for now. The center is a hub for weather research, forecasting and supercomputers that house crucial computer model data. 

Meanwhile, there are reports that more NOAA firings are in the offing. 

Details are emerging about the kind of forecasting and disaster services and activities going away because of the cutbacks

Hurricane Hunters

Included in the chaotic firings appears to be a group of hurricane researchers, two hurricane hunter flight directors and an engineer. 

The hurricane hunter cutbacks are concerning to say the least. These are the seemingly crazy people who fly planes into hurricanes. Their work is invaluable. The dense data the collect from flying into these storms are critical in helping forecast where the storm is going and how strong it will get.

As we learned from Hurricane Helene and Milton last year, and from countless other hurricanes, knowing as precisely as possible where they will hit and at what intensity is essential for getting people out of harm's way, stacking resources in advance where you will need them, and accurately warning the public about what's to come. 

The cutbacks in hurricane experts threatens to diminish the accuracy of the hurricane forecasts. Even if you don't care about human life, and just care about financial responsibility. these firings do not make sense. 

Inaccurate forecasts mean that coming up, people who should have been warned to get out of the way weren't, and people who were warned of an impending hurricane and fled would do so unnecessarily, as the storm went off in a different direction, due to bad forecasting. 

Fired federal hurricane researchers had also been working on improving forecasting models.  So better forecast accuracy is once again out the window. 

I guess Elon Musk is rich enough to avoid danger from hurricanes. The little people who would bear the brunt of these storms don't really matter, do they?

FEMA AND WILDFIRES

It's already been a busy year for wildfires, with that mega firestorm in Los Angeles in January. Plus other wildfires in Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, South Dakota, North Dakota, New York and other states already. 

You'd want well-trained crews to fight these fires. But that's not on the Trump agenda either, apparently. 

The National Fire Academy, the nations pre-eminent federal fire training center, has canceled its wildfire training courses as amid what it announced was the "process of evaluating agency programs and spending alignment with Administration priorities," the Associated Press reported.

In other words, battling wildfires and saving lives and property is not a Trump administration priority. Good to know. 

Wildfire training was set to begin next week.  People already had their plane tickets ready to go to this thing.  Maybe we can get Donald Trump and Elon Musk to rake the forests so that we won't have any wildfires?

I dunno. 

Trump To People Threatened By Dangerous Weather: Drop Dead

Friday's firing of hundreds of staffers at NOAA,
including the National Weather Service, put
American lives in danger, but the Trump
administration is unconcerned about that. 

As expected and dreaded, the Trump administration, led by the Elon Musk putting public safety during extreme weather events in jeopardy. 

The firings include positions at the already-understaffed National Weather Service, which is the nation's front line warning system for when storms turn dangerous. 

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but it looks like about 10 percent of NOAA's work force would lose their jobs. 

The first test of how these cutbacks will affect public safety could come as early as Tuesday and Wednesday, as a potentially significant tornado outbreak seems possible across the Deep South. 

Such outbreaks of severe weather require a high level of attention from meteorologists because such conditions evolve quickly. A harmless thunderstorm can become tornadic in minutes, and the National Weather Service needs to be ready to issue warnings. 

A lack of staff could mean key hints that a tornado is forming could be missed.

Per the Washington Post:

"Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the move to fire NOAA staff 'including mission-critical and life-saving roles at the National Weather Service is profoundly alarming'

'I want to be clear: If there were to be large staffing reductions at NOAA and NWS...there will be people who die in extreme weather events and weather-related disasters who would not have otherwise.'"

The firings include about 375 probationary employees at the National Weather Service. The pre-existing short staffing there is due in large part to a previous hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration. 

Also on Friday, news broke that a federal judge ruled the mass firings of probationary government works across several agencies are probably illegal. The judge ordered the Office of Personnel Management to rescind directions ordering the mass firings.

It's unknown how this ruling will ultimately affect the firings at NOAA and other agencies. 

Already the cutbacks are being felt. The National Weather Service routinely launches balloons into the air so minute details of atmospheric conditions can be assessed. This data is fed into forecasting computer models. 

Balloon launches are already being canceled due to new staff shortages, so the quality of these forecasting models might well diminish.  That's especially bad when emergency managers are trying to get an idea in advance of where a severe storm might go and how bad it will get.  This helps them pre-position supplies in the path of the storm to get an early jump on recovery. 

Worse climate models will mean worse, more inaccurate forecasts. 

Besides, a lot of FEMA workers have been canned by Trump and Musk, too. The combination FEMA and National Weather Service firings will certainly mean emergency responses to U.S. weather disasters will become much worse. Again, unnecessarily threatening lives. 

Your local TV meteorologist will be affected by the cutbacks as well. They rely on data from the NOAA and the National Weather Service to formulated their forecasts. If the data degrades because the NWS firings, so will the TV meteorologists' forecasting accuracy, no matter how talented that meteorologist is. 

Well known, professional meteorologists around the nation condemned the firings. "Mass firings have started at the National Weather Service, including people in critical roles. Cutting waste is great. Mindlessly taking a sledgehammer to a valuable organization is stupid. All the know-it-alls who said we were fabricating this threat can shut up now, thanks," said Josh Morgerman on X.  Morgerman is a well -known hurricane and typhoon chaser and documentarian. 

When the decision to fire NOAA staffers seemed imminent but hadn't quite happened yet, veteran meteorologist (and one of the nation's top tornado experts) had this to say on X:

"The post is not about politics, but about support for my friends that work for the National Weather Service, part of NOAA, a federal agency.

NWS meteorologists work long, hard hours serving the people of this country, not only during times of severe weather, but on routine days as well,

Their surface and upper air observation networks along with computer models radars and satellites are critical for all meteorologists, including those of us in the private sector."

There is already some political pushback to the NOAA firings. We'll see what happens with those. Colorado Sens. John Hickenlooper (D) and Michael Bennet (D) and Rep. Joe Negus (D) have called for an independent investigation into the mass firings, according to The Hill. 

I know this seems awfully conspiratorial, but I think a goal of the Trump administration is to have people live in fear. They're easier to control that way. So they fear having Medicaid, and Social Security taken away. 

The NOAA firings are another form of fear: Will we still receive adequate warnings when severe weather threatens?

This is all also likely to be a part of Project 2025, the wide ranging 922-page plan developed by the conservative Heritage Foundation to remake the federal government under Trump. 

Trump seems to be playing by the Project 2025 playbook. That plan called for privatizing weather forecasting in the U.S.  That, would, of course, make weather forecasting less reliable, and perhaps put critical weather warnings behind paywalls that some people might not be able to afford. 

I still worry we're heading in that direction, which would be even worse that the stupid, ill-advised NOAA firings we saw on Friday. 

This also all could further enrich Trump. Musk and other U.S. oligarchs. Hey, if the billionaires are able to collect a few extra billion beyond what they already have, it's worth the price of lost lives. At least in their rotten minds. 

 

 

New Twitter Rule Once Again Disrupts Life Saving Weather Warnings

A new Twitter rule limiting views could interfere
with meteorologists' efforts to track severe weather. 

Over the weekend our buddy Elon Musk over at Twitter decided to impose a new rule that limits how many tweets somebody can read in a single day.

So-called verified accounts have a limit of reading 10,000 posts a day while unverified have access to 1,000 posts. That's a change from the first announcement of this change on Saturday, when verified accounts could read 6,000 tweets per day, while unverified accounts could read 600. 

This will all seem pretty esoteric and unimportant to most people who have either a passing relationship with Twitter or none at all.  

But it caused an uproar for heavier Twitter users and caused anger and concern among those focused on weather on the platform.

Here's why: 

National Weather Service offices across the nation and other meteorologists use Twitter to track severe weather and damage reports from the public. These reports are extremely helpful in tracking storms, and also helps meteorologists learn forecasting lessons from particular storms. 

These weather offices often scroll through Twitter, looking for reports and updates so they can track severe weather.  This would make them hit their viewing limit pretty quickly. Many people, myself included, often use Twitter to report severe weather to the National Weather Service as it happens. 

I have a local for-instance of this new Twitter limit.  The National Weather Service office in South Burlington covers all of Vermont from Rutland and Windsor counties north and northern New York, including the Adirondacks. 

A serious flash flood hit areas in the mountains west of Plattsburgh Saturday night, and heavy rains threatened to cause flooding (but did not, really) in Franklin County, Vermont. 

This morning, the South Burlington National Weather Service office tweeted: "Twitter has established temporary rate limits that prevent us from seeing tweets from our users. If you need us for any information or to report flooding, please tag us directly and we will be able to see your tweet and respond. Thanks!"

Other National Weather Service offices said basically the same thing. 

During big weather emergencies, National Weather Service offices tweet out tons of information, and some people have come to rely on Twitter to receive weather warnings. This could hamper this habit. It's all the more reason why  you should have multiple ways to receive weather warnings, like the flash flood warnings I've seen in northern New York today. 

Musk of Twitter said he had to impose the limits because of data scrapers. Those are computer programs that comb through posts to extract useful data from the platform. 

Twitter and Musk says this limit is temporary, but we don't know how long it will last.  Musk, ever the mature, not-at-all like a fifth grader, always just sends poop emojis to any reporter that asks question. 

This isn't the first time Twitter messed with weather forecasting

Back in the spring, Twitter  (Musk) banned the dissemination of automated tweets.  The National Weather Service and other meteorologists use automated tweets to blast out weather warnings quickly and efficiently. 

Since people often use Twitter for weather warnings, this would be a bad thing.  Musk later reversed course and allowed the automated tweets again. 

New NASA Satellite To Give A Better Handle On Severe Storms, Wildfires

A rocket launches a new state of the art
weather satellite into space this past
Tuesday. Photo by Kim Shiflett/NASA

You're probably familiar with those satellite maps that show us the cloud patterns over the United States and the rest of the world.  

Those pictures are taken by what are known as "geostationary" satellites, whose orbit keeps them pretty much over the exact same spot above the Earth all the time. 

With increasing risks of severe storms and wildfires, NASA has launched a new satellite that will provide much better information on these disasters, as The Hill reports. 

The satellite, which will be named GOES-18, was successfully launched into space on Tuesday.

It will keep an eye on the western U.S. and Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, Central America and a big chunk of the Pacific Ocean.

Once the satellite settled in,  it will park itself 22,300 miles above Earth, and it will have a whiz-bang arsenal of instruments to keep an eye on would-be dangers.

One piece is a lightning mapper, which is the first time one of these has been placed on a geostationary satellite. That will help meteorologists examine patterns in thunderstorms, especially when they're just starting to develop. 

This, in turn would help scientists determine if these nascent storms will unleash dangerous wind, hail or tornadoes, or just become garden variety thunderstorms. 

The satellite will also zero in on wildfires, especially in the western United States. The satellite will be able to closely monitor the intensity and path of these fires. The satellite will also be able to pick out weather factors that would change the trajectory of these fires.

The satellite will even be able to see space weather hazards heading our way. Solar flares can disrupt utilities on Earth, and early warnings can help operators buttress electrical and other systems against these disruptions.

This new satellite will replace an existing satellite called GOES-17 that watches western North America. The old satellite will be retained as a backup in case the new one has a problem or needs maintenance.