It’s mid-May, and students are getting ready to finish their school year and start enjoying summer break. It’s shorts and t-shirt time for most of us, and it’s only going to get hotter. For people like me who prefer summer over everything else, this is fantastic news. That means that the out look for late May isn’t fantastic for people such as myself.

Unlike the previous Omega block, we aren’t expecting a static pattern in the upper atmosphere, but rather a repetitive one. There won’t be a standing trough, but one that keeps reappearing over and over again. Regardless of the cause, the result is the same: reinforcement of Canadian air and temperatures that aren’t quite where we expect them to be.

More often than not through the end of the month, there projects to be an upper level trough and more unsettled weather than normal from the Mississippi to the Mid-Atlantic and north through New England. The cooler temperatures beneath the trough, and more pertinently, under clouds and swirling areas of low pressure will mean a late May that isn’t as sweltering as we have grown accustomed to.

We had one other unfortunate reminder today. The was the cooler lobe is sinking into the eastern part of the country, there will be a ring of fire, so to speak, on the periphery, with a severe season lasting later than it normally does into late May. It doesn’t look particularly wet, but I expect it to be fairly stormy.

It is in the 90s across most of North Dakota today. Within the next hour or so, I would venture to guess that every reporting site in the state will be at or greater than 90.

That’s hot anywhere, and particularly in mid-May in North Dakota. The thing about North Dakota is that it is higher latitude than almost all of the rest of the contiguous United States, and it falls within the northern High Plains. This leaves the place vulnerable to temperature swings like the one that swung temperatures into the 90s for the early part of the week, but also 50 degrees cooler (for highs!) by the end of the week.

A meandering and fairly useless blob of low pressure in the southeast is going to rob a developing system in the Upper Midwest of a lot of it’s convective oomph, and that’s probably for the best, given the pool of cold air it is going to pull in behind it on Thursday and into Friday.

These are the forecast low temperatures for Friday night into Saturday morning. Make no mistake, after starting the week in the mid 90s, it is completely reasonable to believe there might be some snow in North Dakota and northern Minnesota over the weekend. Fortunately, there won’t be too much in the way of severe weather as this low gets going and the cold winds start blowing.

That’s actually a 60+ degree drop in a few days for parts of North Dakota this week. Can’t they enjoy spring even just for a little bit?

The month of April was dynamic in a way that May hasn’t been. I’ve often said that when the weather gets wilder, The Weather Channel gets better. This thing that I say so often and everyone has heard me say bore fruit again, as they had tie for the top forecast in the month of April. I guess I need to have a similar expression for WeatherNation, who joined TWC at the top of the charts.

Outlet	Forecast Wins (year)
The Weather Channel	4
Accuweather	3.5
National Weather Service	3.5
Weatherbug	3
Clime	2.5
Victoria-Weather	1.5
WeatherNation	1

There sure aren’t a lot of destinations between Denver and Killeen, but it is a thirteen hour drive, which means we will take a break after the first 8 hours. It’s an 882 hour difference between the two towns, which we will cover at a pace of 65.3mph on the highways through the high plains. At that pace, we will surpass 522 miles before we stop for the night.

DAY ONE (Monday)

Low pressure over the 4 Corners is spiraling away in the base of the left lobe of our Omega blocking pattern, which means persistent rain and storms in the Rockies, and some scattered but unimpressive shower activity on the eastern slope of the Rockies. Unfortunately, that will be exactly where we are driving. Expect it to be wet from eastern Colorado to the Texas Panhandle at times, but with cloudy conditions throughout. Fortunately, this part of the world, and the type of system churning away won’t yet be conducive for really nasty weather. We will stop near New Deal, Texas, which is just north of Lubbock.

DAY TWO (Tuesday)

The feature will emerge from the Rockies overnight and into the morning on Tuesday. The weather position over the Gulf and in the lee of the Rockies will mean more assertive thunderstorm activity through central Texas, but it will be shifting out of our route by mid afternoon. It may even be crisp with quite a bit of sun as we head from the flat, agrarian Lubbock, to the flat, military Killeen.

The number of tornadoes reported in the United States has risen dramatically in the last couple of decades, and there is a pretty good reason for that. Radars are better, there are storm chasers everywhere for nearly every storm, and as a result, we are detecting them with much greater frequency. They’ve always been out there, but now we are able to identify them.

This is the same as many ailments. We may not have been able to identify them in the past, but now that we can, the reported cases have gone up. We used to have a lot of cases of consumption, and then tuberculosis was identified, and what we knew as consumption actually was related to many other symptoms, so consumption, now known as TB saw case numbers rose.

The analogy is a little bit different to what is going on this year, but more or less the same. There is a lot of forecast lead time for storms this year. Either because the storms this year are a little bit stronger, or models are better, or there is a change in philosophy, but there has been a greater willingness by the Storm Prediction Center to put greater risk in outlooks further out in days four and beyond. It used to be that any outlook beyond two days with a slight risk was remarkable, and now we regularly see it in the extended outlook.

This has been a gradual trend that is quite apparent this year. I’d like to have some clarification if there was a change in philosophy or just the natural evolution of confidence in forecast guidance, but obviously, there are other things that government meteorologists have on their minds right now. Whatever the cause, this year I have seen more 15 and 30% risks for severe weather in the SPC’s extended outlook this year than ever before. And they don’t always end up being moderate or high risk days by the time the forecast gets a close to the valid date.

The end result of the SPC’s willingness to issue outlook areas further into the future is that news agencies and ultimately your friends and neighbors pick up on those forecasts, and are able to talk about them for longer. So you ARE hearing about storms more, because you get to hear about them for longer. I think this transition time with greater warning lead times for thunderstorms days is a transitional moment, and communication, as always, needs to be the most important thing.

If people are talking about forecasts for a longer period ahead of the forecast valid time, then the expectation is that that storm will be significant grows. It’s important that the extended outlooks are communicated with reasonable expectations, otherwise trust in the meteorology community (always low, of course) will wane, and the intended benefits of better forecast are ultimately counterproductive. Because we have an apparently elevated ability to forecast thunderstorms in the future, we should also be able to forecast without dire terminology in every forecasting scenario.

There was a moderate risk for severe weather in an event that had been advertised for almost a week in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa on Monday. Ultimately, it verified with a strong line of thunderstorms, hail and a few embedded thunderstorms, however the line split and completely missed the largest population center within the moderate risk area. The Twin Cities didn’t really even get a drop of rain.

Ultimately, models will get better and more refined, and forecasts can get drilled down even further. In the interim, because of the nature of storms and the irregular distribution of population, a very good forecast registered as a poor one for many people. Is the extended outlook providing the benefit it intends to? The relationship between meteorologists, the media and the population needs to thrive on open communication so the improvements can be appreciated by all.

Spring is known for being as damp as it is rejuvenating. We accept how sloppy the month is because we know it is going to bring about some momentous changes to the landscape. Well get ready, friends, because most of the country is going to be on the wet sides through the latter half of the month.

Everywhere but the west coast is looking for a rainy stretch from late this week and on to next week. There aren’t any extreme bullseyes, but even Alaska and Hawaii are going to see extra rain fall.

This, along with warm air forecast to build out east is a preponderance of “Texas Hookers” in the next couple of weeks. Generally, this would mean a broad and deep trough over the Plains. Surface low pressure starting in the southern Plains will rocket towards the Great Lakes, bringing hot, sticky weather in he warm sector, and apparently, rain everywhere.

It wasn’t a particularly snowy year in the middle of the country, which often limits the threat for downstream flooding in the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. The Missouri looks to be ok this season, but the Mississippi is spilling it’s banks in some places, or is expected to soon in others.

If you are a budding cartographer, you will note that the major flood stage pink squares extend away from the Mississippi. It’s the Ohio that is the origin for some of these flood waters, thanks to the persistent seen in our very active March. You will note that rivers are high in a southwest to northeast line from east Texas to western Michigan, aligned with the track of our storms last month.

While all that rain isn’t directly over the Ohio, it would be over the Green, Cumberland and Tennessee River, all of which flow into the Ohio. Parts of downtown Louisville have been underwater thanks to the flooding. As this article notes, we are approaching Louisville’s biggest tourism season, and a flood clean up will be a difficult challenge.

As the region attempts to dry out, we are looking at a pretty dry week. This will help flood waters down river rise and fall without too many consequences. Hopefully this is the last of the river flood season.

It was a good month for Weatherbug. I am a huge fan of their updated interface, and I guess you dress good you feel good, because their month of forecasting was very successful. They had half of the overall victories in the month, which is a pretty good way to win the forecaster of the month award. It’s a turnaround after a slow start to the year, but it was well earned. Congrats!

Outlet Forecast Wins (year)
Accuweather	3.5
National Weather Service	3
Weatherbug	3
The Weather Channel	2
Clime	2
Victoria-Weather	1.5
WeatherNation

As I noted in our look ahead earlier today, we have a high risk for severe weather in the mid-Mississippi Valley this afternoon and evening. We can go through full severe seasons without a high risk, so this is notable.

Storms are beginning to crop up. There have been some severe storms along the cold front, including tornadoes from Illinois to Arkansas, but all eyes are on the Memphis area, where supercells are popping up in west Tennessee and northern Mississippi, including a confirmed twister near Jackson, TN. Follow along with ABC 24’s live stream

We’ve started off busy this spring, with several rounds of severe weather, marked by organization and intensity. While storms, particularly tomorrow, stand to be nasty at times, the remarkable thing is how broad the coverage of this weather is expected to be.

The enhanced risk covers over 240,000 square miles, and features, initially a hail threat in the southwestern portion of the risk early in the day, transitioning to some supercells with a tornado threat centralized along the Ohio downriver from Louisville to the Mississippi south to Greenville, Mississippi. Ultimately, the cells will merge into lines, and strong wind in the southern Great Lakes will be the threat.

The upper level pattern features a broad trough over the middle of the country, setting the stage for broad instability. A couple of short waves at the upper levels will produce more focused inclement weather, and the bullseyes in different areas.

As with any nasty weather, it all depends on where it hits. The biggest thing about this system is that it is big, but the top end energy isn’t going to match some of the storms we’ve seen earlier this month. The geographic scope of the weather means it will be a headline maker, as well as a headache maker for anyone trying to travel.

More rough stuff is expected on Monday along the East Coast. The weather, again, looks to be weaker, but more people, more travelers will be impacted than even tomorrow.