Regional Outbreaks of Severe Weather Through Early Next Week; Early Season Heat Wave across the South

Active spring pattern across the center of our nation with several episodes of severe weather and heavy rainfall expected into next week. The potential for very large hail, long track tornadoes, severe wind gusts, frequent cloud to ground lightning strikes and flash flooding are in the outlook. Furthermore, dangerous early season heat wave continues for the Gulf Coast states into early next week. Read More >

The Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) that operates at the Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in Springfield (station KSPI) has been experiencing technical difficulties for a few weeks. Technicians have been unsuccessful thus far in repairing the system, and continue to work with our regional headquarters and the supply depot on potential fixes.

The following impacts will continue:

During the hours that the control tower is in operation, air traffic controllers are supplying manual observations into the system. However, this data is not available overnight (10 pm to 6 am) when the tower is closed.
Because low temperatures typically occur during the early morning, the low temperature each day generally is not available. High temperatures can often be obtained based on the control tower observations.
Rainfall is being provided by the nearby observer that normally takes snowfall observations.
On our climate summaries for Springfield, average wind speed and peak wind gusts will generally be not available or incorrect, because the entire sample of the day is not available. Similarly, when high or low temperature is missing, heating and cooling degree days cannot be calculated.
Areas on our forecast pages that use Springfield as the home site will frequently have the observation missing.
On the hourly weather roundup for NOAA Weather Radio station WXJ-75, the Decatur observation will be used when Springfield is not available.

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Regional Outbreaks of Severe Weather Through Early Next Week; Early Season Heat Wave across the South

Information on Observation Outage at the Springfield Airport