May 12, 2026: Plains Rain Chances | Summer Temps | Strong MJO Pulse

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]having a little bit of a quieter week this week. It's Tuesday, May 12th.

[00:00:03]Looking at the radar coverage here this morning across the continental US. Not nearly as much uh severe activity this week and frankly just not a ton of rainfall to talk about either. Even looking at the radar here this morning, have a low pressure system swinging through Minnesota, kind of the upper Midwest bringing some showers to Iowa, parts of Wisconsin. You go far enough north up near their Thunder Bay. You can see that transitioning over to snow in some cases up in portions of western Ontario. And then another little low kind of sneaking across the Gulf Coast states. That one has been moving pretty slowly from Texas through Louisiana yesterday, southern Mississippi. See, it's slowly working its way into Alabama, Georgia here today, even Florida. I got to be watching Florida closely with these rainfall chances. You can see that rain here. Let me zoom this in if I can. Make that a little bigger.

[00:00:47]And some of this trying to get further down the peninsula. And that's important. Eric showed you that video yesterday, the satellite view of the wildfires burning there kind of west of Miami. And in this kind of broader strong Bermuda high, southeast Carolina's drought, you know, Florida has remained missing out on some of these even recent rain chances. We got rain recently into Georgia. We got rain recently into South Carolina into North Carolina, but parts of Florida missed out. And so, I'm hoping to see some of these storms kind of track further in.

[00:01:15]Almost looks like we might have a supercell uh there in the Gulf. You can see it kind of tracking toward the eastsoutheast. That's that right or deviant motion as we call it. We don't have like a high-res radar out there, but I don't know. Now I'm looking at it and I'm getting more curious to see if we can actually see that one. Looks like the Tallahassee radar might be picking it up. Zoom in. Give it a chance to load. Yeah, way off screen here. That looks like a supercell to me. Impressive uh reflectivity up near 75. Might be hailing over the Gulf there. I think a good way you can sum up just kind of how quiet it is is our soil moisturers are falling across much of the central part of the country, even up into the Canadian prairie here. This was a map that looked quite a bit different, you know, last week or the week before with a lot of these storm tracks kind of coming through that Eric kind of joked yesterday. This corridor here through the Midwest or even the kind of western cornbt that's been so wet of late finally drying out this week. Get some sun, get some wind on it. obviously have those light showers moving through Iowa today, but by and large, we've been on this kind of drying trend for areas in the central part of the country, maybe too dry of late in some cases. Now, I mentioned Florida a second ago. You can see there soil moisture issues and obviously some sandy soils down here.

[00:02:24]Can't read them one to one like we'd read like a 30% per se up here in like uh portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Illinois. But nonetheless, kind of still drier down there and the recent rainfall that we had across the Gulf Coast showing up in these soil moistures as well. If I play this forward, you'll see that dryness continues. So, planting windows for those that you still planting here in midmay, of which there are many, you know, those stay open this week for a lot of places. Can see some rainfall events moving through the Midwest. But look at this change next week. I'm on Sunday, May 17th.

[00:02:54]And you can clearly see, you know, a regime change, if you will, like Monday and Tuesday of next week that we have to talk about that in a second. Here I flip over and show you the surface winds this morning. And it highlights those two low pressure systems pretty nicely here. One that weak one near the Gulf Coast. You can see that spinning there. The other one up in Minnesota. See the air coming around that counterclockwise. We have a cold front on the back side of this tracking through the Missouri River now into western Iowa. That's going to be bringing temperatures down overnight.

[00:03:20]Portions of the Midwest and eventually further to the southeast as well as that cold front just this work week tracks northwest to southeast across the continental US. I'm not expecting a big freeze or frost out of that event. And we'll look at those low temperatures kind of a little bit later in the video.

[00:03:34]Wanted to quickly recap the rains that did fall over the last 24 hours. If you just look down here in Louisiana, far southern Mississippi, some impressive values in here. Kind of hovering and zooming around here up toward three maybe 4 in in some of these locations. These storms are just moving really slow. That's kind of why I was rooting for them to get into Florida, help work back some of that drought, maybe uh cause some of those wildfires there. And over in the Mid-Atlantic, got some rainfall yesterday as well. And then we'll see this area pick up here today. Uh expecting maybe some storms to form, mostly showers moving through kind of the central cornbt as that cold front tracks again northwest to southeast through the day today. Current temps here this morning, we're worried about a kind of mid-Atlantic eastern cornbelt freeze on the overnight. It's about 6:00 a.m. 7 a.m. Eastern time now. Those temperatures are warming up pretty quickly. If I update this, you know, yeah, even seeing more of those kind of freezing lines being walked back north up into Ontario. But we did get down pretty close to that freezing line and a lot of acreage here, which is why overnight had those freeze warnings for parts of Pennsylvania, even down into Virginia, West Virginia, portions of the lower peninsula of Michigan. And temperatures now on the upswing here today. Cold fronts kind of moving through west to east. So, we have that coming on the back side of this, but I think we're starting to work our way out of freeze anyway with these overnight lows not expected over the following nights to get down quite as low as they were in the night before. Red flag warnings posted for the northern plains.

[00:04:57]High wind watch for Montana and high wind warnings posted for portions of the kind of Columbia Basin here over in Washington. Want to jump over and look at those winds for a second because they're impressive uh today. This is just looking at the 3 kmter n wind gust here this morning. You know, already analyzed. Let's move this through like 7 a.m. Central. Western Iowa, eastern Nebraska kind of out ahead of that cold front. We often see the surge in winds indicative that that front's soon to come through and 40s 50s portions of the upper Midwest here. So that front swings through, gusts kind of pick up in the eastern cornbt, not to a damaging threshold, but it's really Wednesday, the next system coming from the Pacific, which really picked those winds up back over on the plains. So you can see Montana values exceeding 50 mph gust that extends over into portions of the Canadian provinces and then down through North Dakota, South Dakota, and that's Wednesday night into Thursday morning when those winds will be coming through.

[00:05:52]That high wind watch posted for much of the state of Montana as a result of that. You can kind of watch this come through. This is the 3 km. So same forecast as the winds, but looking at the precipitation.

[00:06:03]Play this forward through this evening.

[00:06:04]It's taking like 400 p.m. Central. This low now over Wisconsin and showers and storms forming on a line here from Missouri through Illinois into Indiana.

[00:06:13]These are going to be kind of spotty I think and we might even get just like a little bit of thunder out of these. Not too severe. Storm Prediction Center has a marginal severe risk out. Can't rule out like a hail or wind gust report out of these. But not expecting too much as that kind of spins its way east on Wednesday and Thursday. And it's this low here. Very little precipitation associated with it. These dry lows often, you know, can pack a punch windwise, especially out west. And as that low kind of comes through, you can see it plotted there, that 997 low through Montana, Wednesday night into Thursday morning, winds really picking up as that system moves through. All right, before I get into the rest of the forecast here, especially like looking at a week into next week with the precipitation chances picking up there, I wanted to kind of double back for a second and take this in a different direction. We're looking at a satellite view of the globe and it's probably over a geography that we haven't looked at in some time on this channel here. Uh we're staring down at the Indian Ocean, Africa. You can see that continent there. See the Middle East above that on the top of your screen. I can actually slide and kind of pan around this way down here. Antarctica off the screen.

[00:07:14]And I'm looking over here in the Indian Ocean at the tropical thunderstorms that are forming there. Now, the reason that I'm all the way over here to start out my morning at Tuesday, May 12th, is the MJO is over here. And Eric walked you through yesterday, the MJO has been telegraphing itself pretty well in May.

[00:07:31]Now, we typically expect the MJO to have less forecast influence, less influence on our atmosphere in the jetream as we work our way towards summer. Usually by May, that influence has started to wne pretty significantly. But perhaps El Nino giving a little bit more juice to the jetream. We know momentum is picking up here over the next two weeks. The MJ we think is still kind of holding on and driving parts of this pattern here. So, if that's going to be the case, for at least that's going to be our benchmark for the next two weeks, I need to find the MJO now and get a sense where it's going. Now, the MJO, you can think about it as just an area of enhanced tropical convection around the equator. So, it should be pretty easy to find. Um, I knew it was kind of over in phase one or two from the phase diagram. So, I went looking for it and here it is. All this convection. Do you see all that convection and then the cloud debris kind of radiating out from it? That is uh that's the MJL. a broad area of ascent and often tropical convection, you know, somewhere along the equator, which is roughly about right there. So there's our MJO. That would be phase two kind of into three. You kind of think phase one, two, three, four as you get over here, closer to Indonesia. This one kind of looks like a two going into a three because we actually have quite a bit of convection a little bit further east there toward the maritime continent or Indonesia as we call it. So for MJ that's there, phase 2 or three, you know, we want to confirm that on the phase diagram. these little looping graphics Eric and I always show you. And sure enough, here we are on May 12th, uh, phase two going into three. All right, so that analyzed correctly and the forecast right now fairly confident that we're headed into phase 4 quickly.

[00:09:00]I mean, that's a big pulse of convection. We can see that here on the satellite often, you know, more amplified convection transits it more assuredly on its track east. So going into phase four, phase five by next week, and then out into the long range, that kind of week 2 to week three forecast heading out, we think into phase six and seven by the end of May.

[00:09:20]That just kind of coincidentally is lining up right during this kind of pattern shift, this kind of wishy-washy, uncertain late May forecast, even like an early June forecast. At this point, we're trying to figure out if we're going to get work that troughing back into the western US, potentially maybe the southwest, and bring flow back into the plains. And that's the kind of that's been the challenge so far. So, there's a reason why we can try to find the MJL. Let's see if it's playing along on that narrative. And we're going to kind of watch it over the next two weeks to see if that comes to fruition. And if we jump over and look at May MJO phase 7 in these El Nino years, that's the analog I pulled up here. You know, we often see ridging here over the Northeast Pacific, if not over British Columbia. Broad kind of weak troughing over the southwest underneath that. And there's that UPS slope flow into the plains.

[00:10:09]that we were talking about. So MJO phase 7 if that comes to fruition and if we can rely on this forecast a lot of these different analogs have a transit like this in May and El Nino years bring quite a bit of preip maybe severe thunderstorm chances back to the plane.

[00:10:23]So that's been a kind of our focus in late May at least a benchmark you know worth eyeing in the long range. Now if I can jump over and look at that I want to point out some other things. one, we see a little bit of a not a little bit, decent trough here over the Canadian Maritimes. Kind of a ridge here and that cut off there. So, those are those features I'm kind of watching. If we jump over and look at the 500 mibar height anomalies here this morning, let's see if we can play this out that like phase 5 67 uh transition. We'll look at that kind of at the end of the forecast here as I step this through.

[00:10:50]Want to point out there's that low moving through today into the eastern cornbell mid-Atlantic tomorrow on Wednesday. There's that dry, you know, quote unquote dry low that moves through Montana bringing the strong winds there.

[00:10:59]Let's clear this out. You can see a little bit more zonal flow kind of moving west to east across the country here. Not too blocked up. Always kind of helps to bring some quicker chances through for rain.

[00:11:10]And then finally, as we get into Monday, now get a nice trough moving through the Continental Divide. That's going to help kick off some rainfall chances across the plains and then moving east through the country here. Not this big kind of deep parked low across the west, but that'll bring some rainfall chances.

[00:11:27]We'll look at those in a second. And as we play this out fther, Thursday, May 21st, ridging starting to develop here. Maybe something like a hint of a cutoff trough below that. I take the forecast out beyond that. Start to kind of see two signals here. One, there's that ridging in the northeast Pacific. Still seeing something of that cutoff trough here.

[00:11:48]And then this kind of long range ridge signal over the middle part of the continent.

[00:11:54]Eric was worried about the kind of those cold temperatures sneaking in. We'll have to keep an eye on those Monday and Tuesday, but at least the data here this morning not advertising this big deep slug of cold air yet. At least not from the east wave of ensemble. If anything in the long range that actually flips back over warm as we get into that last week of May. Big picture here, we are checking some of those boxes. So there's that ridge over the northeast Pacific, that cutoff trough near California, and we even have that a little bit of troughing here maybe downstream of that ridge over the Canadian maritimes kind of lining up with that analog scenario that we painted. Now, the question is, can we get this trough in here and producing that rainfall in the central and the southern plains? If you're the climate prediction center, you think the answer to that question is yes. If we look at their preip outlook, May 17th through the 21st. Now, that's capturing that first kind of weaker trough that moves through. But 8 to 14 days, look at how wet they're going. New Mexico, South Texas, even up into the central and southern plains. And that's pretty indicative of that trough helping to bring moisture and flow into here. This is not every 8 to 14 day preip outlook right now. In fact, we jump over and I were to show you just the go over to here the weather maps coming down to the 8 to 14 day panel if you will. The climate prediction center definitely wetter uh than some of these other forecast for the southern plains except maybe the GFS ensemble staying wetter for Texas, West Texas into Oklahoma. But there's a lot of dry areas sneaking in here still in the long range even with that little kind of cut off being modeled on the ECWF ensemble. So there's still a pivot point. We have to see where this is going into that third week of May. These 8 to 14 day outlooks start like May 19th and May 20th and go the following days after that. So that's kind of right in that third week pivot point. We're seeing if this forecast is going to develop like we think it will.

[00:13:34]All right. I haven't actually stepped through the preip outlook yet. So I'm going to do that here quickly. We did it on the NAM. There's that first low coming through. Here comes the second one coming through the Pacific Northwest here tomorrow morning. Some rain to the Wamut Valley, perhaps portions of Columbia Basin. And if we can get over the rain shadow, that low sneaks up through Montana, bringing rainfall over here to Saskatchewan and Alberta as we go through the day on Thursday. Not necessarily a dry low for those provinces there as it sneaks through, but still dry to the south of that. I mentioned those planning windows opening up in a wide area across the central part of the country, going all the way back, I think, to like the second the second map I showed there. If I flip back, I always lose my place. All right, take this forecast out. awaiting maybe a few thunderstorm chances here along that stalled front along I7 here. That's through the day on Saturday. Not a huge signal there as we await the low starting to form here finally on Sunday evening. And finally, that weak trough coming west to east. That zonal flow, as I said earlier, always kind of nice for precipitation chances because it just keeps things moving through. You always have another low to talk about in the forecast two or three days out when you have that zonal flow. And here it is.

[00:14:44]994 low western Oklahoma. Widespread plains rain chances on Sunday, May 17th, spreading east into the cornbt by Monday as that low tracks through and then along the front there. You can draw a line here from Ontario almost Hudson Bay all the way back almost toward El Paso of precipitation chances. You get into thunder and storm chances as you get into Illinois and southwest from there.

[00:15:09]So good rain chances for a wide area there. We've seen Texas pop up in a lot of the uh precipitation forecasts for next week. That's why we have that nice storm chance signal here from these models and that even kind of brings another rainfall chance to the mids south. I mentioned you kind of have that zonal flow. Okay, a few days later, here's Wednesday, May 20th. Here comes that next low potential over the plains, ECMWF proper. uh better chances, you know, west of the 100th meridian here, portions of western South Dakota, portions of western North Dakota, portions of eastern Montana and Glasow up there, portions of West Texas. At least something to keep an eye on next week in the rainfall forecast. This is a 10-day forecast. I'm all the way out Thursday, May 24th, 21st. We can't put a Sharpie in this right now. Uh but let's pencil it in as something to kind of keep an eye on as we get through next week. Broader trend after that. Look at just like the general as I get further out in this forecast. Do you know it's just like the general daytime storminess popping up like every evening in like 4 and 7 p.m. you know the warm sector if you will the open warm moist air coming up out of the Gulf just kind of the model's trying to convect it. It's kind of interesting. So you can see that almost every day as we get into that last week of May. The sun is hotter in late May. It's more directly overhead especially over the southeast. And the Bermuda high restrengthening a bit. Eric mentioned that yesterday. And we just have a little bit more flow and more instability. We can see this if we jump over and look at the ECMWF um Cape values going out in the forecast uh here today. Let's take it to 7 p.m. this evening. Pretty poulry. Maybe a little bit of value sneaking up toward a thousand there by and large across the continental US. Close to zero. Again, wide open planning windows. So, what that tells me few if any thunder chances except kind of along that, you know, little front there trying to move through the Midwest. As I take this forecast quickly out further, okay, we get into that Saturday Sunday system.

[00:16:57]Cape values start to come up. might have to watch some severe weather with that.

[00:17:01]We get into like Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, that third week of May, still climbing.

[00:17:07]And finally by the 23rd, the 24th, look at just the broad like 1,000 plus cape from, you know, eastern Colorado all the way over into Michigan, all the way over into Wisconsin, down through the Carolinas, you start to have some instability work in there that just kind of daytime thunderstorm chance increases across a wider area with all that instability. And you know, you get some of these higher values and a low attached to one of these. That's how you get those big severe weather days in late May. I'm sure we'll have more to keep an eye on there. Look at the precipitation forecast. I just took this out a week from the ECMWF. This is the same one that we just stepped through.

[00:17:40]It's capturing that first initial trough on Saturday, Sunday. It kind of moves through and then even out a little bit into that early part of next week. If I take it a little bit further, it's going to capture that next system that came through on Wednesday and Thursday of next week. Remember that one? can't put a hard line like here's where it's going to be raining yet. If I at least take the forecast out 10 days total, you know, you can see some of these areas I'm watching like Hastings, Nebraska, South Dakota, western South Dakota over toward the Black Hills. I mean, that quarter there has been missing out at least seeing some rainfall chances in there from the east on some including West Texas as well. Very wet in a familiar quarter here and drier in a familiar quarter here with that kind of stronger Bermuda high. see it pushing the moisture all the way around like that. This area shifts back over dry.

[00:18:26]It's not uncommon that when we go wet here, you know, we go drier here until we get those daytime thunderstorm chances in here. Speaking of those, if I do play this forecast all the way out, look how wet we go late in the period for the southeast. So, dry initially, but at least some signal that that's going over back wetter. And we're seeing that in a lot of the longrange models, in fact, for the southeast. All right, I'm going to jump this over and look at the GFS. I'm going to start it out at the 7day forecast. Let's go to 168 hours. Initially drier for the western plains comparatively to the ECMWF. If we try to capture that system mid next week on the GFS, taking it all the way out 10 days, still drier. So, it doesn't bring that moisture all the way up into the high plains like the CMWF does. And it still has that drier corridor here over the southeast. However, it does have that familiar wetter corridor. You also see Canadian prairie on the wetter side and this corridor on the weather side in the continental US. I mentioned I would touch on temperatures at some point. I finally found this slide at the end of the video here. Warm temperatures today.

[00:19:29]Very warm over in the western US. I think about a city like Boise or like Twin Falls, Idaho, which just over the last kind of week or two was dealing with daytoday freeze warnings, frost concerns even getting into like late April, early May. And now you're looking at, you know, close to triple digit temperatures here today. Getting up well up into the 90s here in the Snake River Valley. You go down through the Sanwaqen Valley or the Central Valley on the warmer side there up into the 90s if not hitting triple digits near Bakersfield.

[00:19:53]Not totally uncommon in May, but still definitely on the warmer side. But that warmth has started to spread east with that low up here of Minnesota pulling warmer air into it. You know, you're starting to get temperatures rising today. But that cold front's coming for portions of the central US as that swings through. Those rainfall chances today going to port in the colder temperatures overnight in the western US heat starts to bleed into the continental divide as it pushes further east. And so that cold front swings through the east as we go through Thursday and Friday. And the warmth comes back on the back side of this in a big way for the central plains with temperatures soaring up into the 90s as well. starting to feel more like, you know, not April transitioning into May, but starting to get more like May transitioning into June. That's going to be the vibe here as we get widespread 80s across a huge area of the continental US here by Saturday.

[00:20:40]Kind of this is like the dry, warm, kind of calm before all the rain chances next week, say for the Pacific Northwest, dealing with some of the lows here through the next five days. But warm temperatures from North Dakota, Texas, Florida, Maine, all the way over toward California. I'm seeing a sort of song. Then we go into Sunday, Monday, those temperatures remain on the warmer side before we move some of these troughs through and the rain of next week. I picked on like Sou Falls to start. We're a little bit worried about those cooler temperatures coming down again tomorrow morning. This is this morning, Tuesday morning. You can see that 32 there in Pennsylvania. But if we get into tomorrow morning, not seeing any sort of like widespread freezer frost risk despite this cold front moving through the Midwest. getting down maybe into the 40s here, like a low 40s Thursday morning. You can see some low 30s here up into northern Michigan, northern Wisconsin, touching mid30s, but still even into like the southeast, not seeing those kind of freeze or frost lines come back as of right now. We do get out until late next week, those temperatures start to cool down on the back side of some of these systems.

[00:21:43]We'll have to keep an eye on that. But like picking on Sou Falls specifically, I just went out and looked at their frost uh freeze risk assessment and nice thing 86% of historical frosts have occurred before today. It's kind of nice to have climatology on your side. And if we look at the ensemble forecast for eastern South Dakota, we do get colder late next week. This May 19th, this wouldn't be late next week. This would be early next week. And some of those forecasts getting down there toward 40.

[00:22:10]If you go up toward like Bismar, go up a little bit further north. Those temperatures are getting down a little bit further. So, we do have to keep an eye on it. At least right now, the ensemble frost risk very low for eastern South Dakota next week.

[00:22:22]Last thing I'll mention, I do want to show the ECMWF AI model and take this all the way out because if we play that MJO narrative like May 22nd, May 23rd, we do see that northeast Pacific ridge, we do see this cutoff low trying to form, you know, near California. We don't see quite as much riding ridging over the central US, although it is there. But it's kind of important to note the AFS fails to dig this trough into the southwest. You see it just is kind of like it kind of sits here, but it never works its way fully, you know, over the continent. It doesn't allow that kind of UPS slope flow to get going. And this is out like May 24th. I bring this up because, you know, that's kind of a failure mode that we have to keep an eye on. we might get the configuration that matches, you know, ridge northeast Pacific trough to the south of it. The ECMWF AFS isn't totally dissimilar from that, but it's just not quite over the right geography.

[00:23:16]And we end up getting better flow into like the southeast out of this configuration. And that's one of the reasons the ECMWF went over so wet. See if I can find that in the panel here.

[00:23:24]you know, if we take their long-range forecast verbatim, you know, they're wetter here than over here into the central plains or even like the western cornbt, you know, despite that cutoff low still kind of showing up in those preip anomalies there. So, there's still a lot of pivot points for this. We can get the trough ridge general forecast right. This is just how it goes in this long-range forecasting, but you don't play it over the right geography. You shift things around a few hundred miles and you're changing the look of the forecast quite significantly. So, we still have some forks in the road to talk through. Eric and I'll be keeping a close eye on those severe weather chances kind of picking up too as we get some of these uh better lows moving through this weekend and beyond. So, we're seeing a few more of those days show up in our chicklets as we call them these severe weather forecast going left to right on the graph and then you know maybe a little after that before more chances here in early June. Last thing I'll mention I think I've already said that before but just keep finding more slides that I wanted to throw in here. I mentioned earlier while we do have momentum coming up in the near term like the next seven to 14 days that's those systems kind of moving through quickly.

[00:24:21]I mentioned that like you just have to wait three days for another low that says that momentum is increasing next week. There is some hints that in early June that momentum is going to fall back off. I I think if that momentum were to fall back off in June, you know, it only increases the chances of those kind of cutoff lows dominating the forecast in June if they are to set up over the southwest US. It's not an uncommon spot in June. So that's kind of the bigger picture item that I'll be keeping an eye on in early June. This kind of momentum story to see if it's going to influence those southwest cutoff lows. I'm going to leave it there today. This one is my last slide, I promise. Thanks for watching today and Eric will talk with you all