There are already watches out, covering the entirety of Iowa, some of it in a “Particularly Dangerous Situation” designated tornado watch that butts into parts of Minnesota and Illinois. There are already strong storms appearing on the map, having initiated in eastern Nebraska, with the Omaha Metro seeing more tornado warnings earlier today. The storms will rage through Des Moines though the rush hour, and depart Cedar Rapids and the Twin Cities through about 7 or 8 PM. Cedar Rapids projects to get stronger storms, but Minneapolis and St. Paul will get a whole bunch of rain.

A concern I have is that the storms, already forming a bit of a wavy pattern in western Iowa, will transform into a derecho that continues through the night. If that’s the case, then an overnight squall in Chicago or Milwaukee would be possible. The SPC captured the concern with their enhanced risk extending through Lake Michigan. Be aware of the weather in the Upper Mississippi Valley tonight!

There is another enhanced risk for severe weather today, this time ranging from the Texas Panhandle to south central Kansas. Surely, storm chasers are once again going to be out there, probably starting in Amarillo and getting their steak, then tracking east with the storms. For my money, the short term models seems to be favoring development in the late evening in Stillwater and Ponca City, in northern Oklahoma. Were I chaser, that’s where I would go. But I’m not! Good luck if you are.

This cell with potentially 3″ hail is moving southeast of Santa Rosa. Fortunately, the area is sparsely populated, so we won’t have any car dealerships losing their supply of cars, or anything like that.

After a few particularly miserable weeks, if some models are to be believed (and important people are believing them) we might actually be able to come up for air next week. There isn’t a well put together system to be found in the near future, and beyond what, say, the NAM has to offer, it kind of gets into silly territory anyways. The SPC just has marginal risks the next three days, and after that, not a thing. There will be some sultry air mass type of storms in the southern US, and certainly there could be a strong one in there somewhere, but not the widespread chaos of the last several weeks. Hooray!

This is definitely more of a warning about the temperature than the water. It’s usually pretty chilly in the waterways of the Pacific Northwest.

These are the storm reports from yesterday, featuring a whopping 762 reports stretching from their origin in southern Missouri and following a wave through Tennessee into downstate North Carolina. You really couldn’t have asked for a more organized storm system. Usually, you see a few disparate tracks of short lived storm, but this one set up in Missouri and just kept on trucking. The other reports aren’t even in conjunction with the main batch. It’s not just the tornado outbreaks that are strong thunderstorms.

Also, I know we are overdue for a couple of verifications, but our last two forecasts were in Muncie and Goldsboro. Nice work by this complex to avoid our towns. It was a lot closer to Muncie the day before, when tornadoes started in the Kalamazoo area and stretched south along the Ohio-Indiana border

I take two days of forecast data and regurgitate here, but there is obviously a lot that goes into being a National Weather Service Meteorologist. Or maybe it isn’t so obvious. Take a look at the exhaustive briefing from the Lincoln office of the NWS.

Not something you always associate with North Dakota, but the NWS in Grand Forks noted that many sites in the eastern part of the state were 3-4 degrees warmer than normal for the month.

I feel like I’ve seen this banana in the middle of the country on the SPC severe weather extended outlook for a month straight now. Is the extended outlook broken? Who do we call to get this fixed? I think some people in Omaha, Wichita and Oklahoma City would like the number.

These are the spring thaw dates from the Boise WFO, one of the high elevation spots that is more prone to extended frost and freeze seasons, and even out there, we are approaching the end of their typical season. It’s almost summer!