Scattered rain and thunder today

We call it nowcasting.

Watching radar and satellite trends hour to hour is high on meteorologists' to-do lists in summer. How will fronts, sunshine and instability collide in the next few hours? Where will the often scattered and haphazard development of thunderstorms occur?

Yes, summer in the plains is like a game of weather chaos pinball. Radars light up like pinball machines today with scattered hit or miss thundershowers. A few may approach severe limits, especially south of the metro.

• Latest Twin Cities radar loop

Weak low pressure tracks right over the Twin Cities this afternoon. Look for spotty showers and thunderstorms to pop up nearby and overhead through this afternoon. High pressure returns sunshine tomorrow before the next low pressure wave rides in Friday night.

It could be worse.

Five years ago today I was on the air live for several hours on MPR News network stations tracking a major tornado outbreak across Minnesota. It was the largest tornado outbreak in Minnesota history, though the Twin Cities was spared.

A total of 48 tornadoes tore across Minnesota that day, with 4 EF4 twisters including the devastating Wadena tornado.

Don't sweat the thundershowers today.

Summer oozes north

With apologies to Carl Sandburg, summer creeps in on cat paws the next few days. Minnesota rides the northern edge of a tropical humidity as we head toward the weekend. As winds shift southerly, dew points will rise into the noticeably sweaty upper 60s Saturday, and again early next week.

The sunniest days look like Thursday, the first half of Friday and Sunday into Monday. Rain favors today, early Saturday and possibly Monday. Temps push steadily toward the 80s.

You'll notice summer gradually gaining a stronger foothold over the next week.

Congress: Let's cut National Weather Service offices from 122 to 6

Because less is always more right?

With a budget of $1 billion, and a reported 6-to-1 return on investment, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service is one of the most cost effective government agencies. There are always ways improve efficiency, but fewer NWS warning meteorologists in your local area could be a disastrous idea in my humble opinion.

Here's more perspective from Jason Samenow at Capital Weather Gang.

The Senate Commerce Committee is introducing a bill on Tuesday that would consolidate forecasting at 122 National Weather Service (NWS) forecast offices into six regional offices.

The measure and its supporters argue that it would make NWS forecast operations more efficient and nimble while saving money. Opponents say it would reduce jobs and significantly compromise forecast quality by dispersing the trove of local knowledge within the nation’s forecasting network.

The National Weather Service Improvement Act would order the NWS to come up with a plan for establishing regional forecasting centers within a year of enactment. It recommends that these centers be co-located with auniversity or government lab and staffed to ensure that local forecast quality would not be not “degraded.” After a review of the plan from the National Academy of Sciences, the NOAA administrator is ordered to set up the regional hubs within a year.

One of the comments following Jason's piece caught my eye, and makes a strong case for the return on investment of the NWS.

Of all the things our federal government does, why pick on the National Weather Service for cost savings? The entire budget of the NWS is a paltry $1 billion annually. Its budget is about 33% less than that of the state university I work at! It's mind-blowing to think that an entire federal agency limps along at a budget level of a state organization. Any NWS meteorologist can tell you how much chewing gum and how many rubber bands they have to use to keep things going at their funding level. The situation at the National Hurricane Center's been particularly bad. Even so, anyone remember the forecast for Sandy, or Katrina? Excellent, days in advance.

Or, to put it another way, the annual budget for the entire NWS is less than the cost of one F-35 fighter jet that doesn't work. The entire F-35 program over its lifetime could fund the NWS for 1,500 years. ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED YEARS. And we're looking to fix the NWS? Really?

Studies show that the ROI in weather forecasting is something like 6-to-1. In other words, the American people are MAKING money hand over fist in terms of reduced loss of life and property damage due to NWS forecasts.

Any true fiscal conservative would increase the budget of the NWS and make it even more local and less regional, because of the phenomenal ROI. True fiscal conservatives like to save and make money!

So something else is afoot here. Follow the money--not the relative pennies spent on the NWS, but the campaign donations to those who are proposing this reorganization under the guise of "increased efficiency." Who really wants this, and why?

Stay tuned on this one folks.