CIMSS

10/12/2026

Can we tell if the changing climate is causing extreme weather events? Ask the Weather Guys!

Weather events result from an interaction of many factors, including current conditions of the atmosphere. Weather is considered extreme when it’s far outside of normal for a particular place and time. Weather-related extreme events include heat waves, freezes, heavy downpours and tornadoes. Attri...

10/05/2026

Have you heard the term "water year"? What's it used for? Ask the Weather Guys!

A water year is used in hydrology to describe the 12-month period for which precipitation totals of an area are determined.The U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, operates a nationwide system of instruments to monitor discharge in rivers and issues comprehensive reports on the use of water resources. T...

10/02/2026

Why is the climate reference period an average of 30 years? Ask the Weather Guys!

Climate normals are 30-year averages for various climate observations such as temperature, precipitation and snowfall. A 30-year period smooths out weather variability while getting a good representation of our current climate. The current 30-year normal covers the period 1991-2020. This averaging p...

09/28/2026

Listen to the Weather Guys live today on WPR:

Tune in to the Weather Guys on the last Monday of each month at 11:45 a.m. CST on The Lee Rayburn Show on the WPR News site.

09/23/2026

Yesterday Hurricane Polo reached extreme Category 5 intensity with peak winds of 155 knots/ 180 mph and an observed pressure of 892 millibars. This places the storm as the second strongest storm on record in the Eastern Pacific for pressure behind Hurricane Patricia (872 mb). The aircraft measured an outside air temperature of over 31 C or 88 F at 8,000 feet in the eye of the storm. Polo went from a tropical depression to a Cat 5 in about 46 hours. Just incredible and one of the fastest intensifying storms ever observed in the Eastern Pacific. The previous storms that equaled or exceeded this were also in El Nino years (Patricia in 20145, Otis in 2023, Linda in 1997) . The extreme warmth in the Pacific will continue to fuel more storms out there. The next storm to threaten Hawaii is now strengthening south of the islands.

09/21/2026

How was Wisconsin's summer? Ask the Weather Guys!

Meteorological summer is defined as the weather from June 1 through Aug. 31. The reference, or normal, climate period is the 30-year period of 1991-2020. The State Climatology Office recently completed its analysis of our 2026 summer conditions and created a comparison with previous summers.The stat...

09/18/2026

Never a dull moment when Tom Skilling visits! Thank you Tom for highlighting the work we do and our researchers.

In the thick of the season, some of the nation’s top hurricane scientists are thousands of miles from the ocean.

09/09/2026

The Atlantic continues to show no signs of tropical development and there is no indication this is going to change in the near future. In fact an unusually strong late season Saharan Air Layer (SAL) outbreak is now spreading across the Main Development Region (MDR) which will suppress activity over the next week or so. 2026 will set a record for the latest forming hurricane in the Atlantic during the satellite era surpassing the date of September 11 set in 2002 and 2013.

09/08/2026

Why do clouds have flat bottoms and fluffy tops? Ask the Weather Guys!

Clouds are composed of tiny liquid water droplets, whose diameters are about the width of a human hair, and tiny shards of ice in a variety of shapes, or habits. Whether a cloud is mostly liquid water droplets or ice particles depends, as you might guess, on the ambient temperature of the air in the...

09/02/2026

Hurricane Lowell is a powerful Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 135 knots/155 mph. The storm is on the verge of reaching Category 5 with some satellite estimates already at that level including the CIMSS ADT and the microwave AI method the D-MINT algorithm. The storm is following a fairly classic track for storms in this region from east to west. Other major hurricanes that have passed through this are are shown below. Note there is one exception in this plot, Hurricane Iniki in 1992 that turned sharply north. NOAA is sending aircraft to the region for both research and monitoring of the storm starting today. One goal will be to sample the atmosphere north of the storm to see if a turn to the north toward Hawaii is possible as some models show. Right now it is too early to say. About as many models go west as do turn north. Such bifurcations in track forecasts are common at longer forecast ranges and represent an area of research focus in order to understand and reduce these uncertainties. If you would like to see where other historical storms have occurred maybe where you live you can do so using this very handy tool:

https://coast.noaa.gov/hurricanes/ =4/32/-80