Insider Blog

It feels like the sun has gone into hiding for early fall, as most of Mid-Missouri has been stuck under a thick, stubborn cloud deck for days. Forecasters at the National Weather Service don’t expect it to clear out anytime soon. The setup started early in the week, with a cold front bringing in cool

While the Atlantic has been quiet this year, off Mexico’s Pacific coast, Hurricane Polo underwent a historic intensification, growing from a 50 mile-per-hour tropical storm to a 160 mile-per-hour Category 5 monster in just 24 hours. That jump of 110 miles per hour in one day is one of the fastest intensification rates ever recorded

A calming tone echoed across parts of the University of Missouri’s campus on Tuesday, and it came from a scattered field of wooden speaker boxes. These “Sun Boxes” are a collection of solar-powered boxes that play sounds with the sunlight, timed to the fall equinox. The notes change when you walk between the boxes and

September is typically a time of plenty across the heartland, but instead, our local fields are drying out at near-record speed. Weeks of relentless late-summer sunshine, near-record temperatures, and high evaporation rates have acted like a giant blow dryer on Mid-Missouri. The result is a rapidly accelerating “flash drought” that is creating immediate, severe challenges

Missouri’s late-summer heat and dry conditions are stressing trees across the state, but the timing could have been a lot worse. That’s according to Brian Schweiss, a sustainable forestry specialist with MU Extension, who says a late-summer heat wave is better than an early one. “The good news with the warm temperatures and trees, since

We have been tracking a developing El Niño pattern for months, but the latest data from the Climate Prediction Center shows this system has shifted into a completely different gear. As of this week, ocean temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific are officially spiking past the 3.0 degrees Celsius (over 5 degrees Fahrenheit) above-average mark.

By the numbers: moving one of college football’s oldest border clashes from late November to late summer completely alters the atmospheric playbook. For more than a century, generations of Tigers and Jayhawks measured the Border War by the bite of late-autumn air. From frozen sidelines and sleet showers to pocket hand warmers and bundled-up student

It is an experience almost every driver has had: after weeks of dry, sunny weather, dark clouds roll in, rain begins to coat the windshield, and the moment you tap your brakes, your tires feel loose. It can be surprising. How can even a gentle shower cause just as much sliding and skidding as a

Columbia just went 20 days without measurable rainfall, a streak that ties for the 5th-longest dry spell our area has seen since 2020. It’s also the 5th-longest dry spell in the last decade, as these streaks have accelerated in recent years. Here are the five longest rain-free streaks recorded in Columbia since 2020: A 30-day

Just a few weeks ago, much of Mid-Missouri was green and humid. Now, drought is creeping back in after a dry end to summer, and fire danger is also climbing as vegetation starts to turn brown weeks ahead of schedule. Ben Webster, Fire Program Coordinator with the Missouri Department of Conservation, says he noticed a

Take a drive past any sunflower patch across Mid-Missouri in late summer, and you will notice a striking sight: tens of thousands of massive, golden heads standing in uniform alignment, all facing the same direction. Every mature bloom is locked due east. A common misconception is that sunflowers follow the sun across the sky all

As late summer fades into early autumn, subtle shifts in our atmosphere trigger one of the most incredible migrations on Earth, and you most likely notice it right in your backyard. Monarch butterflies are starting to make their way back from the Northern United States, and they have a long journey ahead, traveling to areas

If you’ve been out in the evening recently, you have probably noticed that we have been losing daylight quickly. Over the past couple of weeks, the entire state of Missouri has experienced its last 8 PM sunset in a long time, and sunsets are only getting earlier. As of August 28th, the sun will be

When a wall of rock, ice, and water tore through the Nepal-Tibet border region, the devastation was immediate and staggering. But the science behind why it happened is still coming into focus. Dr. Mylène Jacquemart, a senior researcher at ETH Zürich who studies glaciology, walked through what we do know and what we don’t know

If you’ve been looking forward to another astronomical event, you’re in luck. Tomorrow night, on August 27th, a lunar eclipse is expected to be visible across the majority of the Americas, and all you’ll have to do is step out into your backyard to see it. For a lunar eclipse to happen, the Earth needs

Out west, dry conditions are fueling dangerous wildfire growth. In Nevada and Texas, months of below-normal rainfall have left vegetation critically dry, and that dried-out landscape is turning into fuel for fast-moving fires. Firefighters in both states are battling blazes that are spreading quickly, pushed along by gusty winds and low humidity. Officials say the

As we head into September, forecasters are already eyeing the pattern for the start of fall, but summer isn’t quite ready to let go. Early signs point to a warmer-than-average stretch for Central Missouri. According to the Climate Prediction Center’s 8-to-14 day outlook, which covers September 1st through the 7th, the odds are tilted toward