Tornado Updates

Tropical Disturbance #1 is continuing to organize as it crosses the tropical Atlantic, moving toward the Caribbean. A cloud of Sahara dust is just to the north, but the plume is thinning, and there's a good chance the disturbance will be able to fight it off. The National Hurricane Center has the odds in the high category that the system will develop into at least a tropical depression next week.

A Flash Flood Emergency was issued for the Greensboro, North Carolina, area on Saturday. It comes just days after Tropical Storm Debby caused flooding and tornadoes in the state.

University researchers believe they have developed a technique that will warm the surface of Mars, potentially making it more hospitable to life. The study was recently published in the Science Advances.

Suzanne Flament-Smith said she was walking along the bayfront in a region of the Tampa metro area known as Safety Harbor after Hurricane Debby when she found the message in a bottle. The letter was dated March 4, 1945, which was about two months before the end of World War II in Europe. The war in the Pacific did not end until September 2, 1945, when Japan surrendered.

Tropical Disturbance #1 is a cluster of disturbed weather approaching the halfway point between Africa and the Caribbean. It's raising eyebrows because computer forecast models show it developing into a significant tropical system – possibly a hurricane – near or east of the Bahamas next week.

Debby was downgraded to a post-tropical storm Friday morning, but the flood and severe threat from the storm remain into the weekend.

NOAA issued a La Niña Watch in February warning that a cold status of the El Nino Southern Oscillation could have emerged as early as the spring. Recent computer simulations show the change from neutral into an official could happen as late as this winter.