First named storm of the season?

This might just be Andrea by nightfall today.

This storm, if it does become a tropical named storm, will last less than 48 hours and not make landfall anywhere.

Looks like Max called it.

Snow in the northern plains last week. Tornadoes and flooding in Oklahoma and Texas. And our first named system 10 days early.

Texas.

Good lord.  

Moore Oklahoma may very well get hit again today.    

I live in St Petersburg Florida now.  We go swimming and boating on the gulf frequently.  I have been following the water temperatures very very closely and it seems to me that they have been shockingly high.  Everyone says the swimming season runs from April to  November, when the gulf temperatures here are above 68 degrees.  I wont go in unless it's at least 70.  I went swimming new years eve .  We were swimming at the end of February.   The water temperature in the gulf yesterday was 82.5 degrees.   Thats 4 1/2 degrees above average for May.  It's also 1 1/2 degrees above what they say is the maximum for May.    Gulf temperatures have been this far above the average  all year.  And no one is talking about it.   Won't water temperatures this high insure that there will be more storms and that they will be much more intense.  It's a recipe for disaster.  This seems huge to me - and no one is talking about it.  

sarahzm said:
  Won't water temperatures this high insure that there will be more storms and that they will be much more intense.  It's a recipe for disaster.  This seems huge to me - and no one is talking about it.  

 It is definitely one of the contributing factors.  NOAA's forecast for the hurricane season comes out tomorrow.  Should be interesting what they say.

Yeah, I just had a friend return from a FL gulf coast vacation and he described the water like "bath water", which seemed pretty warm to me.

it’s not bath water yet but it was simply awesome last week. Still a bit refreshing but has warmed up dramatically just since my visit 3 weeks ago. Come July and August, that water is downright HOT. Doesn’t cool down at night which really makes for an amazing experience with people swimming all evening into the night.

(But, Yes, for other reasons not a good sign it’s getting and staying warmer than usual.)

Tornadoes dropping all around Tulsa.

Jefferson City Missouri took a direct hit tonight  from a massive tornado.  Catastrophic damage.

Awful.

We're reading/hearing about horrific damage all through Ohio and Maryland. I'm sure that's not because of a shortage of other news.  

Should we be looking out for reputable agencies to support? (Homeless pets, rebuilding, donating school books and/toys etc;  anything else we can do from outside USA) How quickly are new weather threats rebuilding?

We just got back from our annual trip to the midwest.   The flooding is incredible to see.   Areas that I thought we beautiful lakes were, in fact, just flooded plains.   One area was so flooded that there were actually pretty good sized waves rolling across the water.   

We've had a very significant tornado threat pattern for about 10 days now but it will soon settle down.

But the flooding is quite bad and continues.   

FWIW, Morristown and Madison are under a tornado warning right now.

Sydney is officially drought-declared and is on water restrictions. It’s Winter on 1st June. 

I truly hope your northern summer turns out to be kinder than ours was: rain when and where you need it, not too much in one place. The same with winds, and heat. And fewer raging fires, destroying everything for hundreds of square miles. 

April showed the highest amount of New Jersey rainfall on record. For obvious reasons, the May tally has not been released but I bet it also will be a new high.

  You've stolen our rain! Our ambassadors will have to talk