We’ve had a pretty noisy stretch over the last couple of days, with severe weather sweeping through the Plains over the last two days, and into the Mid Mississippi Valley today. High pressure is moving to the middle of the country tomorrow, and will stamp out much severe weather from then on, at least through the weekend, and perhaps through the beginning of the following week.

If you live in the center of the country, you were just experiencing some wet and stormy weather over the last couple of days, and through the end of the week, you will see temperatures that are well below normal. Great news, though, as the end of the month, nearly nationwide, is expected to be warmer than normal.

Among the places seeing warmer temperatures on the way is Phoenix. It’s not going to be crazy, but it will be a few degrees shy of 100 next week.

But the Upper Peninsula is under burn advisories because the threat for wild fires in the region is so high. They got one storm this month, but it is still abnormally dry in the region, and with a strong system developing in the Plains and moving towards the Great Lakes, wind is going to pick up as well, meaning that if something does touch off, it could spread rapidly.

Sure, yes, the forecast snow, in this case showing the chance of 8″ over a three day stretch through Tuesday evening, is confined to the mountains, but it is still snow, and still an ample amount of snow, especially in northern California. That means busy weather, moisture aloft and yes, cold air at some level. This will translate to severe weather when the feature hits the Plains.

Low pressure moving through the Northern Plains today, in addition to bringing the threat for severe weather in the south and clouds to eclipse viewers for a lot of the country, is bringing some very gusty winds to some parched sections of the central US.

The Weather Service in Goodland called for hurricane force winds, and observations throughout the region are right there, with gusts over 50mph in many locales.

People area going to be looking close at Monday, and like Topeka, there are quite a few people that could see the eclipse that will be clouded over. More on that later this weekend.

But with the intensity of some recent storms in the mid-Atlantic, there is a still a threat for some flash flooding, particularly in the coarser terrain of the Ohio Valley.

We spent part of our spring break at Wisconsin Dells and watched snow just keep piling up. The snow was laser focused on Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, which really was not the spring break mood we were hoping for. Ultimately, the real winner was Marquette, Michigan and the Keweenaw Peninsula, where even now, there is almost a foot of snow on the ground. Happy April!

There have been quite a few severe storms this evening, from Indiana to Texas, including super cells with detected tornadoes and very large hail. St. Louis was in a tornado warning, and some suburbs saw 2″ diameter hail. There had been a moderate risk for severe weather over Oklahoma that has since been allowed to transition to an enhanced risk, but again, tomorrow, we are looking at a moderate risk, with the bullseye over a different “o” state – Ohio.

It’s absolutely severe season now, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. Be weather aware throughout the Buckeye State and even points south to the Florida Panhandle. Strong, long lived tornadoes are most likely, however, in that red shaded areas.

As we learned from our last update, today is the only day to be concerned with rain in the Tampa area. To the north off the coast from Cedar Key, the NWS has issued a Marine Warning that looks strange.

Polygons usually expand through the expected storm motion to account for the potential variability of the track. Instead, this one narrows around the storm motion. That’s just a backwards polygon is what that is.