Eddie Wolff

@ewolffwx

Meteorologist | PhD Candidate @ UIUC CliMAS 📡🌪🛰 | Tornadoes, updrafts, radars, social science, etc. | he/him

240 Siguiendo396 Seguidores206 Publicaciones

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Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· 11d

If you're at AMS Madison and not tired of hearing about tornado emergencies quite yet, I'll be presenting our insights on forecast decision-making at 4:30 this afternoon! Excited to share what we learned from 13 individuals who have hit send on these warnings 🌪️

Title slide for "Warning the rarest tornadoes: examining forecaster decision-making in tornado emergency issuance"

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· 13d

Excited to present some of my Ph.D. research this afternoon! I'll be in the Hall of Ideas at 2 PM talking about discrete updraft cores in QLCSs (observed and simulated) 😁

Title slide for Impacts of Upper-Level Shear on the Formation of Deep Updraft Cores in an Ensemble of Simulated QLCSs

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jul 13

Some exciting news today: our new paper has just entered Early Online Release in @ametsoc.org #BAMS! It's everything you want to know about tornado emergencies, including an analysis of POD and FAR, a comparison to recommended VROT and STP thresholds, and more. journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

Map of tornado emergency polygons for 2014-2023. Filled contours show kernel density estimate of all EF-3+ tornadoes over the same period (with a bullseye centered on the SE)

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jun 21

Yet another busy severe weather day across southern Illinois and Indiana. It's really been nonstop this summer...

Look at the current NWS warnings for Illinois and Indiana. 8 tornado warnings currently in effect across the two states (plus Kansas)

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jun 16

Welp, we might be in for another long day tomorrow... Storms look like they could get messy pretty fast, but it's going to be an extremely volatile environment. Chance for some strong tornadoes in the same areas as last week.

Day 2 SPC outlook. Moderate risk for central Illinois and parts of northwest Indiana

SPC day 2 tornado outlook. Highest chance for strong tornadoes from Springfield, IL north to Kankakee and east to Lafayette, IN

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jun 12

And some lightning south of town to cap off the evening

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jun 12

When it comes to viewing QLCSs, nothing beats the roof of a parking garage 👀 That slightly lower portion in the 2nd photo earned itself a tornado warning about 5 minutes later

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jun 11

Welp here we go again... Biggest threat in Champaign-Urbana is definitely going to be wind, but can't rule out some QLCS tornadoes either. Exactly when and where the worst weather occurs is going to depend on how the first batch of storms to our west evolves over the next few hours

SPC categorical convective outlook for today. Moderate risk over northern Illinois

SPC wind risk for today, 60% hatched risk over northern Illinois

SPC tornado risk for today, double-hatched 15% risk over northern Illinois, including Peoria, Rockford, and the Chicago suburbs

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Apr 10

Introducing our Quickly Deployable Python-based Instrumentation (QD-PI)! A little over 2 months of preparation with @liamltwx.bsky.social, but we finally have a working prototype. Thankfully our weatherproofing survived some light drizzle at this year's Engineering Open House 🌧️

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Apr 1

Curious what's going on in WoFS at the moment... Looks like the problem has amplified over the last few runs and spans thermo and kinematic fields. First thought was assimilation of a bad surface ob, though not seeing anything obvious in ASOS or OK Mesonet 🤔

Warn on forecast output showing a bullseye of 18 degree Farenheit temperatures in northern Oklahoma

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Mar 15

Also pretty common to see tornadoes form north of these features... Which this storm is also trying it's best to do.

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Mar 15

Classic rear inflow jet signature to the southwest of Champaign, IL. Drop in reflectivity behind the line is a good indicator of a strong downdraft, with the line bowing outward in response to the enhanced cold pool. Likely that Sullivan is about to experience some very gusty winds

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Feb 27

Thursday night fun with Raspberry Pi and an Adafruit sensor. Jumped for joy when I finally started logging data from this thing. Now to code up some functional logging software… And build the actual mesonet this is going on…

Raspberry pi with an adafruit pressure/temperature sensor

Raspberry pi desktop with code to record temperature and pressure from attached sensor

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Feb 19

3 tornado-warned storms along the Illinois-Indiana border currently. Southernmost storm has been confirmed by spotters

Radar image of tornado warned storms near Robinson,IL

List of recent storm reports. Two tornado reports from Crawford county in Illinois

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Feb 19

Answer: tornado watch well south, centered on the Ohio River.

Radar image with a tornado watch across southern Illinois and Indiana

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Feb 19

We’ll likely see a tornado watch for southern IL soon (mesoscale discussion out now). Will be curious to see if the SPC decides to include Champaign County or not (I’m leaning towards no)

Radar image with a mesoscale discussion across southern Illinois

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Feb 19

Not expecting anything too severe here in Champaign. While the front has pushed to our north, skies remain overcast and moisture hasn’t been meaningfully advected this far north. Also expecting the stronger low-level flow (and better shear/hodographs) to stay south of I-70

Surface map showing a low over western Missouri with a warm front stretching across central Illinois

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Feb 19

Severe thunderstorms and perhaps a strong tornado possible across southern IL, IN, and OH this afternoon/evening. Chance we could see some long-track supercells that eventually grow upscale.

SPC Day 1 convective outlook showing an enhanced risk across southern Illinois and Indiana

SPC day 1 tornado outlook showing a hatched 10% risk across southern Illinois and Indiana

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Feb 7

Friday fun in the fab lab 😎

Lab workspace featuring some outreach posters our newly unboxed 3D printer

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Dec 14

Fun to see the snow-covered ground (and relatively warm rivers) show up clearly on satellite thanks to the lack of cloud cover. Not as thrilled about the extremely cold temps we’re getting as a result though…

Infrared satellite image showing cold temps corresponding not to cloud cover, but the snow-covered ground. Some winding regions of warmer temps highlight where unfrozen rivers are located.

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Nov 10

A few views from IDOT's plows in Northwest Indiana. One in the lake effect band and one in the resulting backup on I-65 😬 511in.org

Snowy roadway with low visibility from a snow plow's dash camera.

Traffic backup from another snow plow's dash camera.

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Oct 11

We needed a way to quickly plot skew-ts from our balloon launches out in the field, so I was able to put this together... UI-Sonde is a lightweight GUI modeled after the import sounding functionality of the SHARPpy GUI. I also tried to capture the look of the classic SHARPpy format with a few tweaks

UI-Sonde interface with various options for importing and plotting a sounding

Example skew-t from a recent balloon launch at the University of Illinois

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Oct 3

Inevitable result of a drought during harvest: field fire near St. Joseph, IL this afternoon

Vegetation fire reported in the Pulsepoint app

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jul 29

Over 230 wind reports yesterday. Not all that surprising given the classic summer setup. Strongest gust reported was 92 mph from the ASOS station in Spencer, IA ⛈️

Plot of storm reports across the US on July 28, 2025. Corridor of wind reports stretches across northern Iowa and southern Minnesota.

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jul 20

Looks like the main corridor of storms has set up south of Champaign today. A few funnel clouds spotted earlier north of the county though. Here in town, there's still a chance for some downpours and a rumble of thunder heading into the overnight.

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jul 20

A chance for some severe weather near Champaign-Urbana this afternoon and evening 👀 Though exact details will depend largely on where the remnants from storms currently out west end up

SPC Convective Outlook for 6/20/25. Slight risk for parts of Illinois and Indiana, stretching southeast into Ohio and Kentucky. Wind damage will be the primary threat, but a tornado and some hail cannot be ruled out if supercells are able to develop

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jul 19

Evening walk views

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jul 16

Stormy weather made for a good excuse to update some old radar plotting code (while my actual research code runs in the background)

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jun 19

The American mind cannot comprehend toonie sized hail (alt: I just had to Google what a toonie is lol)

Canadian Thunderstorm warning for toonie sized hail

Eddie Wolff@ewolffwx· Jun 19

And just for the heck of it, here's a modified practically perfect hindcast. The risk definitely extended further east than outlooks were depicting, but that's to be expected in set ups like this. Lots of uncertainty in how long this line would actually hold together and how severe it would be