Dr. Robin Tanamachi 🌪️

To my new followers here: Greetings! I’m a radar meteorologist who studies tornadoes & storms. I also study field work impacts on atmospheric science students’ learning & career aspirations (Fig. 1). Outside work, I’m a mom, spouse of @meteodan.bsky.social, cyclist, painter, & ham (WX0RT).

🚨 New PolarWx Model Viewer is live 🚨 It's been a while since my PolarWx model page got an upgrade - so today I'm releasing a new model viewer with a fully interactive and customizable layout, many more plots & models, and many new features. polarwx.com/models/

Some unhinged comments and quote posts on this. Machine learning with artificial neural networks has transformed the environmental sciences, and rightly deserved the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. This isn’t using a chatbot to predict hurricanes.

My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today. Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man.

A rain-soaked swath of the Southwest U.S. endured additional flooding as crews in New Mexico scoured evacuated neighborhoods Sunday for dead animals, downed power lines and other hazards left behind by receding floodwaters and at least one tornado.

Copernicus/ESA's Sentinel-2 caught this beautiful view of the fall colors across southern Ontario yesterday afternoon.

Write down the names of anyone defending Ramaswamy’s reprehensible ad, contorting themselves into rhetorical pretzels to excuse it, or meekly suggesting that he take it down rather than canceling their endorsements. Make sure they never hold public office again. Better yet, elect Acton!

LLMs aren’t “peers” so it makes no sense for them to do peer review. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

After seeing tons of online spewage about bad NWS warnings the last 2 days, I felt compelled to write a piece outlining why we are where we are — and even though the reasons aren't mainly DOGE or Trump (they haven't helped!) I hope you'll check it out. balancedweather.substack.com/p/southwest-...

These pages no longer provide international observations. It's a good thing that weather stops at international borders. 😢

Wayback Wednesday is a thing, right? A segment from an episode of History Channel's Nature Tech about tornadoes, specifically a segment about using an IR camera in the field, featuring Dr. Bluestein and @tornatrix.bsky.social circa 2003. IR video suggests it was filmed 2003/05/15, assuming UTC.

NOAA's satellite programs have certainly dealt with issues over the years but scientifically brought massive benefits. GAO reported last week on concerns about the geostationary program going forward, including coverage gaps and loss of lightning mapping. balancedweather.substack.com/p/government...

BREAKING: Major shakeup in NSF leadership. Brian Stone, who has been performing the duties of NSF director since April 2025, is retiring on Dec. 31. Rebecca Keiser, who has been acting chief of staff, is also retiring, Oct. 31. Unclear who will replace Stone, since O'Neill's nom hasn't moved.

“Because I’m not a good enough AI prompter, I can’t figure out how to prompt AI to tell me how to help all students become better AI prompters.”

After the latest damage surveys by NWS Raleigh, we're now up to 13 confirmed tornadoes in North Carolina on Sunday. That's the most tornadoes in the state in a single day since Hurricane Isaias — the previous one, on August 3, 2020. #ncwx

How professors spend their time

Productive lunch break! #VoteBlue @meteodan.bsky.social 🗳️

Comments due by 11:59pm today, 11/13 rfi.grants.nih.gov?s=6a2b1c22c3... Community feedback matters. Perspective on what is at stake along with suggestions on how to respond 👇

I give this sundog from yesterday evening an A-. #inwx

Besides being a stupid question this headline implies that I, a career academic, should consider a fucking chatbot a “peer”, and that is the most offensive thing I’ve heard in years.

Tropical Storm Rachel heads northwestward towards Baja California, where it is expected to make landfall tonight.

#Isaias 4pm CT update: A life-threatening storm surge is expected from the Mouth of the Mississippi River to Suwannee, Florida. Residents under evacuation orders should leave immediately and follow advice from local officials.

I’ve been at the @ncar-ucar.bsky.social members’ meeting the last few days, hearing from interim UCAR President Eric Barron and others about how UCAR and NCAR are weathering the metaphorical hurricane of the last two years. I came away grateful that clear-eyed leaders are at the helm.

Trump announced $100M to train U.S. citizen scientists only. www.bloomberg.com/news/article... These are not new funds. NSF underspent its education funds by $100M this past year. Of course, it pales in comparison to the $560M lost due to terminated NSF education grants: grantwitness.org/nsf 🧪

Ten hours of Hurricane #Isaias intensifying in the central Gulf of Mexico overnight. See my previous post related to some "first hurricane" stats.

Thoughts on the intersection of findings that the administration diverted $1.4B in NSF funds away from investigator-initiated research and today's New Golden Age of Science Summit showcasing the White House's preferred political priorities of what constitutes 'science'.

Tropical Storm Isaias has an improving satellite appearance and could undergo rapid intensification during the next two days before landfall along the northern Gulf coast. @sciguyspace.bsky.social has the details: theeyewall.substack.com/p/tropical-s...

As you've probably noticed over the years, I've been a big fan and proponent of the Hurricane Threats and Impacts graphics that the NWS has produced for every tropical cyclone near the U.S. since 2015. Here is the suite of graphics from Wednesday afternoon for #Isaias. These will evolve of course.

While the Gulf Coast NWS comms issue appears resolved, with the growing tropical risk was seeing way more social media traffic about the radar outages that occurred over the weekend. Feel compelled to share a thread as seeing a lot of misinformation. (1/)

Exclusive: A new analysis refutes James Watson’s claim that he was the first to recognize the significance of the famed photograph 51. https://scim.ag/4rTKck8

I don't think privatization is the answer. Weather data such as this needs to be publicly available and free. The answer is this administration shouldn't have gutted NOAA's budget with the horrible DOGE cuts.

When the Trump administration started dismantling a $368 million ocean monitoring system earlier this year, scientists, fishermen and Congress fought back. On Saturday, a 238-foot ship set sail to reinstall the first batch of monitors in the waters of the Pacific.

Thanks to @justingon10tv.bsky.social for point out to me that NWS Wilmington had another comms outage Fri am. That outage is ongoing and has now been joined by a Gulf Coast NWS outage. balancedweather.substack.com/p/comms-outa...

Hawaii rarely sees significant hurricane damage. But in just over a month, the islands felt the effects of three major hurricanes. Nolo, Lowell and Lala all reached Category 4 strength or higher.

“Boys learn by watching how the men they look up to treat their partners, female colleagues, women on the street. They notice how you react to sexual assault allegations ... As always with parenting, sometimes you try your best and it’s not enough. But that does not make trying optional.”

I don’t think everyone realizes how bad things are for US science: For the fiscal year that just ended, the Trump regime withheld $1.4 billion from the National Science Foundation’s research budget, which is about 1/5 of its primary research budget.

I think there may be a new contender for a METAR "final boss": PASY 300753Z AUTO 08028G34KT 7SM GR OVC006 M A2944 RMK AO2 RAE0655GRB0655E01RAB01E12GRB12E44RAB44E53GRB53 SLPNO ALSTG ESTMD $

What does a field campaign look like, and how does it drive important research🌾🔍? This webinar explores severe weather field research, the many paths into the field, and why professional adaptability matters. Register here: https://bit.ly/4xLldR7

"Between 1996 and 2025, technology transfer from federally funded university and nonprofit research generated some $3.3 trillion in economic output across the United States. The report notes that the economic impact figures are based on self-reported data and are likely an underestimate."

Major hurricane Polo poses a serious threat to Baja California Sur, with significant heavy rainfall and flash flood potential into the Southwest US. Meanwhile the Nor’easter produced even higher coastal flood levels in Raritan Bay than Sat. balancedweather.substack.com/p/hurricane-...

“OpenAI often discusses these incidents as if it were a passive observer of an autonomous technology — a rhetorical gambit that acts as a smokescreen for bad behavior. We must return the focus to the actual humans responsible for setting up these hazardous conditions” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/o...

Do yourself a favor and search unclaimed property portals of every state you’ve ever lived in. Today I found two checks that never made it to me because of old addresses, and filed claims for both. Search “unclaimed property [state_abbreviation].gov” to avoid being redirected to finders’ sites.

‘Tis the season for our annual EAPS 22700 KLAF Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) field trip! My students measure the instruments to check compliance with WMO and NOAA guidelines. Thanks to Purdue airport staff for letting us visit and escorting us around the grounds!

“First, the ones showing hurricane-force winds over a pretty broad area? One run of the Euro and looking at the winds 2,500 to 5,000 feet off the ground. That....isn’t where people live. It’s nonsense and fear-mongering.”

"In 1882 John Park Finley of U.S. Weather Bureau pioneered tornado forecasts... Finley’s work continued until 1885, when U.S. Army Signal Corps banned use of word “tornado” in forecasts for fear of inciting public panic. Finley’s forecasting for Weather Bureau abruptly ended & ban cont for decades"

Just a couple hundred miles from Mexico's southwestern coast, Hurricane Polo strengthens even further. Polo has recently recorded a central pressure of 892 millibars, making it the second most-intense Eastern Pacific hurricane on record, behind 2015's Hurricane Patricia.