⚡Severe thunderstorms possible in a broad area today. 🌪Tornado risk highest in western Nebraska.

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Good morning everyone. Happy weekend to you. I'm meteorologist Ted Keller. We're going to talk about some severe thunderstorm risks for the next couple of days and really it's focused on today, tomorrow, and maybe a little bit on Monday before it kind of takes a break again, I think. With a jet stream that was blocking severe thunderstorms breaking down this weekend and then kind of returning to that same mode and we'll talk in greater detail about that here in a second. Let's start this day by day though. Here's Saturday's outlook, a level one and two issued by the Storm Prediction Center. Covers a lot of ground from Montana all the way down to Texas. This is assumed to be dry line activity here, very conditional. Uh I think the greatest threat of overall severe weather of all modes is probably right here. We'll show you all that. Uh I broadcast this from Southwest Missouri. There could be a hail producer that happens in our part of the world later on today. Again, a very conditional threat and not very widespread. I don't think the hail will be particularly large, but uh you know, we're kind of sensitized to it here in Springfield after that hail storm several weeks back. Uh anyway, um so on the just zooming in on this, the slight risk as it's called, the yellow, runs from northern Oklahoma back into South Dakota. And uh there is a tornado risk that has been uh amped up a little bit for today, higher, and it's shifted around since the overnight runs. So now we have a 5% tornado risk in here from North Platte southward to Hays, Kansas, and that arc right there where yeah, we have an um an upper-level system coming out and I'll show you that here in a minute. And I think a pretty favorable wind profile here, a turning of the winds. Uh that'll be good. And a uh somewhat of a dry line, not real sharp, but enough to probably fire off a couple of supercells in this area here.

[00:01:43]Uh there's an overall concern about supercell versus cluster thunderstorms.

[00:01:47]I'll show you why in a minute. But on the intensity side of this, they did Sometimes they don't issue an intensity at all, which means they think they're all going to be pretty weak tornadoes. But when they go to level one like this, intensity one, that means that they're going to saying somewhere the bulk of it certainly going to be in the EF0 to EF1 category, but not a not a just kind of an outside chance, not something you know, to be ignored for an EF2 somewhere in there as well.

[00:02:14]Um on NATO cast, they certainly have been and continue to be emphasizing the panhandle in Nebraska, sort of right, you know, actually this is but you can see where it is. And then maybe a small chunk of um Colorado. Then this arm here has been extending slowly here. Uh if I were to consider a storm chase today, uh it would be out here. I had Well, I'm I'm not up early enough to get to here, so that's not going to happen probably. Um but yeah, I'm watching this, you know, I I don't know. I'd I'd I'd have to just be convinced. I think tomorrow is a better day to be honest, uh closer to But again, uh Storm Net, another learning model, has always put North Platte in that area in a higher tornado risk, and this would be true. This is the 7:00 to 8:00 hour tonight, so that's interesting right around dark, right just getting into dusk. Severe hail risk is a 15% worth mentioning.

[00:03:10]Um and in the intensity side, you could get some 2-in hail, up to 2-in hail in here, a high probability there uh that happening, but uh you know, it would be in this area here. And again, these don't always match because the colors are the probability of have severe hail, which is 1-in or greater.

[00:03:27]And then this hatched area says this is what we think the spread and intensity and size, in other words, of the hail will be. And they don't match because what what this is saying is where you're in a hatched area, it means you have a lower probability, but same likelihood of a size, if that makes sense.

[00:03:43]Uh and um tornado or tornado cast, NATO cast does do a hail risk parameter, too, and they put a significant, you know, uh 10% chance of uh 2-in or greater in this area from North Platte down into central Kansas and a 30% risk of hail. So, they're a little bit more optimistic about hail production.

[00:04:01]Uh on the wind side, nothing really to get too excited about, although the SPC did say that down into this lower risk area, the intensity could be about the same if for any thunderstorms that managed to pop through there along the dry line. And then on CSU's outlook for tornadoes, this is makes sense Nebraska and western South Dakota. And again, the arm of that is just kind of slowly crept down into Kansas over the last couple of days. They're more excited about the hail on this outlook than they are about wind and that is pretty consistent. So, here's what's going on. The 500 millibar flow, I think I grabbed this, yeah, at 6:00 tonight.

[00:04:39]So, there's this kind of a broad shortwave and embedded in this shortwave are little speed maximum areas like here and here and here. And these are all right on the threshold of being enough bulk shear, which is the difference in wind between the surface roughly and this level roughly. Um so, if you look at that for that same time, uh if it's colored that darker blue, it's it's it's plausible it could happen. It's not a widespread synoptic kind of thing that applies to this entire area, but it does happen in pockets. That's because we have that kind of batched together wind maximum area. And so, this is where I think the best rotation for low-level storms will be, but this is I don't think this can be discounted either if the storm mode is supercell. If it's not supercell and it's just cluster, it's going to be very hard to get a tornado or find one in that type of environment. Cape, no problem. We've got enough instability to to do the job here. In fact, if you look at those purple colors, they're they're in the 4,000 range there in central Kansas. And you can already see when I grabbed this at 6:00, there's some thunderstorms forming right there that are interrupting the flow. And if I show you an image of that, I think this one was grabbed uh at 6:00 or 5:00. I can't remember which time here, but we already have what looks strongly to be clustered thunderstorms. Some more indications of supercells up here. And yeah, it's it's it's kind of a messy mode. It's not quite there, I think. Um if I were to decide to do it today, I'd probably pick this. I don't know if this is all that bad either. Again, you shouldn't rely on the radar simulated radar I will put because it does change.

[00:06:17]But I what I One thing I do uh do when I analyze this is I look at several runs.

[00:06:22]Um and also, yeah, I was mentioning there might be a hail storm or two in southwest Missouri. That kind of indicates that there. Then we'll go ahead to Sunday. Now, this is interesting because the severe thunderstorm risk is broadly on the marginal risk from um North Dakota all the way down to the Ozarks to the Arkansas um Missouri border. Includes Springfield and Kansas City. And the level two area, we'll zoom in on that, is uh up around Lincoln and Omaha and Sioux City, almost to Sioux Falls.

[00:06:49]Norfolk is in that, too. The SPC paints the tornado risk at I forgot to put the graphic on there, but that's 2% from St. Joe up to Omaha, all the way up to uh parts of South Dakota.

[00:07:02]Um that's interesting. Now, if I show you the Storm Net uh view of that, they actually put the tornado risk uh from this period, the 12-hour period from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. on Sunday, centered more around Warrensburg, uh which is interesting because the SPC There's there's very little overlap.

[00:07:20]Theirs is here.

[00:07:21]And this one puts it right here. So, we'll see what happens here tomorrow. I just wanted to put that out there.

[00:07:28]Um and again, CSU is not really concerned about Missouri at all. In fact, they back up the tornado risk even more to the northwest than the SPC does.

[00:07:37]And they put a hail risk behind that, too. Wind risk, not so much. Now, on Monday, more of a broad brush, marginal risk, but covering a lot of ground here.

[00:07:45]There's a lot of uncertainty, and when I see this, I think it is possible for um once we understand the upper upper level wind flow with this, that a slight risk will be uh possible in some of these pockets.

[00:07:57]We'll see what happens here.

[00:07:59]Um and so, on Monday, we do have the severe weather risk being painted in a real broad brush fashion here. Um with no tornado risk showing up at all. So, hail and wind, mostly hail probably will show up. And then, the outlooks beyond Monday are not impressive enough to show right now. There's really not that much going on, but I will say it does kind of shift north at first, then comes back into the central plains, but the risk levels are very low at this point. So, I just chose not to put them up there.

[00:08:26]Supercell composite for today through the 5th is definitely emphasizing that area. Again, this graph kind of sums up the first 2 days. So, there's really not much to this except for today and tomorrow. And then, maybe some of this includes Monday.

[00:08:40]And then, we go beyond that, though. And again, this thing has been bouncing around like a yo-yo. So, the for week two, I've seen it here, and now it's back up here in the northern plains, which I think makes more sense to me.

[00:08:51]Week three, the overall probabilities diminish and shift north, but again, the variability is going to be at its greatest when we're talking about a forecast that far into the future.