NOAA Sea to Sky: Education resource database

Shocking! Within this cluster of storms, a single lightning bolt captured by NOAA satellites was recently certified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as the world’s longest flash on record. The horizontal distance of the bolt stretched 477 miles, from the central coast of Texas to southern Mississippi, when it flashed on April 29, 2020.

Meteorologists at NOAA’s National Weather Service have always monitored the conditions of the atmosphere that impact the weather, but over time the equipment they use has changed. As technology advanced, our scientists began to use more efficient equipment to collect and use additional data. These technological advances enable our meteorologists to make better predictions faster than ever before.

At the Old Woman Creek National Estuarine Research Reserve, a new community of students is getting their boots wet gathering data through a new program that serves the children of migrant farmers.

GOES-T will track destructive wildfires, lightning, Pacific Ocean-based storms, dense fog, and other hazards that threaten the U.S. West Coast, Hawaii and Alaska. It will also monitor solar activity and space weather to provide early warnings of disruptions to power grids, communications and navigation systems. 

In the evening of March 25, 1948, a tornado roared through Tinker Air Force Base (AFB), Oklahoma, causing considerable damage, a few injuries, but no fatalities. However, the destruction could have been much worse. A few hours earlier, Air Force Captain Robert C. Miller and Major Ernest J. Fawbush correctly predicted that atmospheric conditions were ripe for tornadoes in the vicinity of Tinker AFB.

Research by NOAA and a visiting scientist from India shows that warming of the Indo-Pacific Ocean is altering rainfall patterns from the tropics to the United States, contributing to declines in rainfall on the United States west and east coasts.

Thousands of amateur meteorologists across the United States help the National Weather Service track weather patterns by performing a daily task — checking the temperature and precipitation amounts on their property. These citizen scientists record and report their findings to the agency, every day.

The desiccating Four Corners drought, intense heat waves on the Iberian peninsula and in northeast Asia, exceptional precipitation in the Mid-Atlantic states, and record-low sea ice in the Bering Sea were 2018 extreme weather events made more likely by human-caused climate change, according to new research published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS).

Lightning strikes, giant sparks of electricity in Earth’s atmosphere that are hotter than the surface of the sun , are a major hazard during thunderstorms. Knowing when and where lightning is occurring can tell us a lot about a storm - including its location, whether it’s intensifying, and if the storm is capable of producing severe weather.

Huddled around computers, teams of meteorologists-in-training carefully analyzed data from radar, satellites, and other observing systems. Telltale signs of severe thunderstorms appeared on their displays, tracking toward Dallas. As the storms intensified, these students faced several key decisions: should they issue a severe thunderstorm warning, a tornado warning, or do nothing?