We created Earth in Action to provide a lens into what's happening on our planet, as it happens. Whether it's something typical, like the current air temperature, or an extreme event like a major dust storm, we wanted to provide an opportunity for people to see them.
"This is going to help fill that gap in minutes to hours lead time that's vital to know where the heaviest rain is going to hit," Ralph said. "And when and what communities are going to be affected so people in the preparedness community and water resource management community can take action to help protect people's lives and property."
While humans have assembled a lot of weather data, flash floods are too short-lived and localized to be measured comprehensively, the way the temperature or even river flows are monitored over time. That data gap means that deep learning models, which are increasingly capable of forecasting the weather, aren't able to predict flash floods.
During this heat wave, "not only are daily temperature records likely to be broken across the region, but even the high temperature records for any day in the entire month of March," the National Weather Service said in a Tuesday morning forecast.
Britain is about to be hit with showers of 'blood rain', according to experts from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). This is thanks to a plume of red Saharan dust, which is currently sweeping over Europe towards the UK. When this dust mixes with Britain's persistent rain, the precipitation will take on a distinctive reddish colour - creating a phenomenon known as 'blood rain'.
But what, exactly, is a blizzard? A blizzard doesn't always mean "a lot of snow," though it can certainly bring heavy snowfalls, as this storm is expected to along parts of the East Coast. Rather, the National Weather Service defines it as a snowstorm with winds regularly above 35 miles per hour and "considerable falling" or blowing snow for at least three hours.
When I spoke with emergency management officials last year, they all mentioned the same frustrating scenario. People ignore storm warnings until the precipitation starts falling, then suddenly everyone rushes out at once. The roads become congested with anxious drivers, accidents spike, and stores run out of essentials just when people need them most. But here's what really gets meteorologists worked up about this pattern. Modern weather forecasting has become incredibly accurate, especially for major winter storms.
The Met Office has put two amber and seven yellow alerts in place for Thursday, with chief forecaster Neil Armstrong describing the system as a multi-hazard event combining heavy rain, powerful winds and snowfall. Storm Goretti, which was named by the French meteorological service, has also been labelled a weather bomb by the Met Office as it strengthens quickly over the Atlantic before tracking towards the UK and France.
Intensely cold air is scouring the central and eastern U.S. again and will send temperatures plummeting all the way to the tip of Florida. Along with this new Arctic incursion, a major bomb cyclone storm is strengthening off the coast of the Carolinas, potentially bringing rare blizzard conditions to the region. Some areas haven't seen this amount of accumulating snow in over 30 years, wrote the National Weather Service's office in Wilmington, N.C., on Facebook.
In November 2025, a massive storm rolled across the lower Mekong River delta, dumping multiple inches of rain onto the wide, flat river plain that covers much of Cambodia. The river rose and rose. The force of the water churned up mud from the river bottom. The muddy water flowed downstream and rushed into the many farming and fishing towns that line the Mekong's banks.
If you are reading this on the East Coast, congratulations on the warmer weather you're finally getting this week. It was cold and snowy for a while there. Here in the West, we wish we'd been in your shoes. Spare a thought for the tens of millions of us who live on the other side of the continent, where a catastrophe is unfolding.