Dr. Robin Tanamachi 🌪️
@tornatrix
Assoc. prof at Purdue specializing in severe wx & radar. Storm chaser since 2001. All opinions expressed here are solely mine and not my employer's. She/her
Looks like I should have waited a few minutes b/c I could have gotten a more equivalent screen shot, including a large cargo vessel passing between the lighthouses. I want to hold all the other independent variables constant, dammit.
The AQI in Duluth, MN, one of my favorite places to visit, is 928 this morning. Below: What Duluth Canal Cam looks like this morning vs on a recent partly cloudy day. The other Duluth Harbor Cams live streams show similarly noxious scenes: youtube.com/@duluthharbo...
Ugh. My condolences. Not that far from you, Duluth’s air looks like you could cut it with a knife. Live 📺: www.youtube.com/live/HPS48TM...
Lengthy, but comprehensive and well-documented analysis of how Project 2025 attempts to straitjacket American science have borne out. Like the Borg, the enemy is adapting in the face of effective defense. substack.com/home/post/p-...
As part of an academic writing program I completed recently, I was asked to track my "writing energy" on a simple 1-4 point scale every 30 min for a week. I extended it to two weeks, mainly because I'm an overachiever. I have empirically confirmed that I am a morning person.
At #AMS2026, Dr. Jessica Schultz predicted we would start seeing widespread critical NEXRAD failures by the early 2030s due to aging infrastructure, obsolete parts, technicians retiring, etc. It looks like these failures and outages are already starting to happen. 🎥 ams.confex.com/ams/106ANNUA...
"It must be nice to only work three hours a week" is a tired old canard about professors that should be deep-sixed. The professor at the front of a classroom is the tip of a temporal iceberg that includes class prep, grading, email, advising, and far more. Source: www.chronicle.com/article/the-...
Norman tried to randomly kill a bunch of my friends last night
You may have noticed NWS rolling out new #HeatRisk products this season. They are intended to simplify communicating heat-related health threats using 5 categories (similar to hurricanes). More info here: www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/heatrisk/
I drove my husband to a Father’s Day tornado yesterday. Video later!
This was literally the only glimpse we got of Mattoon-Charleston, IL tornadogenesis on 18 June 2026. Yep, that skinny funnel on the left was all we saw, looking W. We had to escape because it immediately made an El Reno-style, SE-ward swoop.
We closed the books on #SPOTTR 2026 this week. The students continue to be my strength and inspiration! @meteodan.bsky.social @eaps-spottr.bsky.social
Visibility may be an issue for chasers in central/southern IL today, since the orientation of the line will be more zonal than meridional. #ilwx
Debating whether to launch a sonde today... I'd like to sample some of these huge half-circle hodographs to initialize model runs.
It’s not every day I get to see a healthy looking wall cloud on my drive home around 2130 UTC. This one rotated weakly, but didn’t produce any tornadoes. #inwx
Not bad for having not even made the decision to chase until 6:30 pm! This tornado was north of DeMotte, IN around 8:00 pm on 11 June (0000 UTC on 12 June).
The second module in the COMET MetEd Radar Meteorology course is published! "The Radar Equations" demystifies common forms of the single point target and distributed target equations for backscattered power. Free registration required: learn.meted.ucar.edu#/online-cour...
With the Indiana primary election nearly over, I am very much looking forward to NOT receiving these daily glossy mailers that are paid for by out-of-state super-PACs. 🗳️
I am immensely proud of my graduate student, @morgancrows.bsky.social, who successfully defended her M.S. thesis this afternoon! Congratulations, Morgan, and look out, world!
The so-called “tornado mop” looks more like a “microburst mop” to me. (Diagram by Dr. Ted Fujita.) I’m also not sure I would want a tornado to clean my house. They tend to spray debris and crud around.
Feeling immense gratitude for the staff of NWS Indianapolis, for letting my radar class visit their office on this cold, rainy Saturday!
Is that a reflection off a nearby tower, KDVN, or are you just happy to see me?
We did a 20Z radiosonde launch from West Lafayette, IN #inwx
Quick severe wx setup over C IL/W IN today: CAMs persist storm cluster over C IL->NW IN 22Z Moisture ✅ Warm sector dewpts > 60 F Lift ✅ OFB reinforcing the warm front Instability ✅ C IL mesoanalysis > 1000 J/kg, with ~ 4 hrs of ☀️ left to go Shear ✅ 0-6 km shear > 70 kts approaching from the W
PGUA’s blockage patterns literally could not be worse for the Mariana Islands rn #TyphoonSinlaku
Walking the dog at 5:30 am, the clouds parted just long enough for me to get a clear view of the gibbous moon. 🌖 My thoughts wandered to the four humans out there in a metal container, truly representing the best of us. That’s pretty flippin’ cool. #ArtemisII Image from NASA’s Dial-A-Moon.
I wish @samillingworth.com would post on BlueSky more. His Slow AI Substack is one of my favorites, and absolutely worth the time spent reading. open.substack.com/pub/theslowai