Weekend of Storms from Plains to Midwest

My birthday is Monday, and as such Mother Nature is supplying the goods for a weekend party. As a fan of warm, stormy weather I've often lamented how frequently my birthday weekend is spent beneath a massive Great Lakes trough pumping unseasonably cool air down into the Central U.S. with weather too crappy to even grill outside in, let alone chase a couple supercells. Not so the last few years!

In 2024 I enjoyed one of my best chases ever documenting a handful of significant tornadoes on Friday, April 26th in Nebraska and Iowa with Colin Davis. The next day we got close to the actual birthday tornado on April 27th but were too far away at the moment a murky HP produced its only tornado near Calumet, OK. In 2025 we scored again on April 26th with a distant rope tornado east of Roswell, NM, this time it was Colin and I along with our buddy Charlie Kruschek. We cap busted on my birthday-birthday while others enjoyed a big tornado in the Nebraska sandhills, and then caught a dusty tornado going through Belvue, KS on April 28th.

I still need that birthday tornado on April 27th.

2026 looks to bring much of the same, but I'm playing things a little differently than 2024 and 2025. The Midwest has been RED HOT since mid-February with relentless high-impact storms, and I've documented tornadoes in Illinois on February 19, March 10, April 2, April 3, and April 17th. That's not to say that I'm full for the year and am ready to scoff at anything less than perfect, but coming out of my busy winter work travel season with a couple long-distance work events trickling into March and April I am saying I'm tired, and this birthday weekend looks like it could provide a unique combination of rest and high-end storm chasing.

First of all, I sure do wish I was in Oklahoma for last night's (Thu, Apr 24) tornadoes, but several others captured some extremely high-tornado video.

Max Olson already has some crazy video up - he was with Aaron Rigbsy and Adri Mozeris:

Daniel Shaw was all over the Enid, Oklahoma monster that occurred further south, later in the evening:

These storms grew upscale into an MCS that propagated southeast across the Ozarks bringing some additional badly needed rainfall to the region. Parts of northeast Oklahoma and northwest Arkansas saw 1-2"+ rainfall totals.

Isolated storms may pop up along the OFB along the Red River into western Arkansas today, but upper-level support is rather weak. A supercell or two with a low-end tornado risk can't be ruled out during the late evening, and the SPC has maintained an enhanced risk across this area.

Things become a little more interesting on Saturday as the residual outflow boundary and warm front lift into central Oklahoma.

We’re looking at a classic late-day setup across the southern Plains into eastern Kansas and Oklahoma, with steep lapse rates sitting over a very moist boundary layer. That’s going to build moderate to strong instability along and east of the dryline, especially near the warm front.

Storm coverage is still a bit uncertain, but at least isolated development looks likely by late afternoon, especially near or just north of the warm front. Some of the early storms may be elevated, but there’s a good signal that surface-based supercells could eventually take over near the dryline/warm front intersection and expand through the evening.

Any storms that do go up will have the potential to become supercells fairly quickly, with large to very large hail and pockets of damaging wind. Low-level shear isn’t overly impressive, but near the boundary there’s enough localized spin that a few tornadoes can’t be ruled out—especially if a storm can latch onto that zone.

As we head deeper into the evening, storms may begin to organize into a cluster and push southeast toward the ArkLaTex and lower Mississippi Valley. If that happens, the threat may transition more toward damaging winds, but embedded supercells could still spin up a tornado or produce large hail along the way.

Farther south along the dryline in Texas, storm development is much more questionable. That area lacks strong large-scale support, but if storms can break the cap with daytime heating, a few isolated supercells are possible with big hail and a low-end tornado or wind threat.

Recent high-resolution guidance has been friendly, illustrating scattered supercells erupting within a region of strong instability and low-level shear, enhanced by the nearby warm front/OFB in east-central Oklahoma. A little help from the boundary here could do the trick, but it'll be an uphill battle with terrain and road networks in the region to get yourself into the right spot at the right time.

I'd probably park it somewhere along I-44 and hope a storm goes up in a patch of favorable terrain and road networks, we'll saw Bristow, Oklahoma for now.

Things become a little complicated on Sunday. If storms on Saturday night organize into a significant MCS they could modulate the warm sector such that the best air is shoved way south, with the warm sector beneath the approaching wave strongly capped. The result is likely to be a boom or bust type day along the dryline.

Irresponsibly early to talk targeting given uncertainties but for now I'd probably park it somewhere near Wichita, KS and hope the cap breaks late in the evening. I wouldn't be real excited though, because the latest guidance for Sunday has had fairly weak ascent over the region and a rather lackluster low-level jet presence over the dryline. I lean bust for now, but there's a long way to go with this one. A weaker Saturday PM period of convection could do wonders for the environment along the dryline on Sunday afternoon.

There's also a secondary target further northwest along the Colorado/Kansas border, we'll say Sharon Springs, KS. Moisture being tugged back toward the higher terrain could lead to enough instability beneath cooler temps aloft to kick off a weaker supercell or two which could be photogenic, especially if it squeezes out a brief tornado. Logistically, if you're tryin to chase all of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, this region doesn't make a lot of sense.

We're even further out into a world of uncertainty as we get to Monday, but this one has the synoptic bones, and several other hallmarks of a significant severe weather event in the Midwest.

A potent upper-level wave will yank a stout EML from the desert Southwest into the Midwest on Monday, atop a very moist and unstable environment. It's not yet clear how any remaining convection from Sunday may impact the surface map, but it's becoming increasingly likely that we'll see an explosive environment favorable for supercells and significant severe weather, including a few strong tornadoes across portions of Illinois, eastern Iowa, eastern Missouri, and northern Arkansas potentially in multiple rounds ahead of the approaching cold front including a combination of pre-frontal waves / outflow boundaries from earlier storms.

Something tells me it's going to be a corridor between St. Louis and Quincy IL on Monday, but we'll see.

What am I doing with all of this? I reserve the right to change my mind at any moment, but for now, I'm leaning into a birthday weekend of recharging my mental and physical batteries, along with my camera batteries to prepare for whatever fresh hell the weather plans to bring to my home region on my birthday.

On Saturday and Sunday I'm planning to be home in Illinois monitoring the situation out west, but also taking some time with the family, perhaps hitting an Illini baseball game, and drinking a cold beer or three. Not to celebrate a job well done already on the 2026 spring severe weather season, but definitely to pause for a moment and acknowledge a hard last couple of months while looking ahead to what's likely to be a loud finish to the spring and summer across the Plains and Midwest. I do not think this busy weekend is the last of the big storms across this corridor over the next few weeks/months.

Good luck if you're out there today, tomorrow, and Sunday.