May 25, 2026: Much Drier Midwest | Wet South, Storms in Plains | Heat Wave Builds North...

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Well, good morning everybody. First of all, a little bit later than I normally am. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole this morning. Uh I was I'll just tell you what I'm going to do in this forecast video. You've probably all seen the tweet that's all about this uh upcoming El Nino, its size, and what it'll be doing to weather patterns, not only across North America, but around the world. And you've probably heard about the comparison to the mega El Nino of excuse me, of 1877 and the resulting uh famine that happened in certain pockets around the world. Well, there's a lot of discussion about that and something called the Southern Oscillation Index, and I'm going to talk to you about it here in a few minutes.

[00:00:34]So, if you want to zip forward to that, go go right ahead. It's later on in the forecast video. But I've left you on this this view this morning of the sun rising here across the country because yesterday was absolutely fascinating as a meteorologist to be sitting at this race over here in Indie. Now, I did not get to watch the NASCAR race um later on the evening, but it was um I'm going to tell you something. As yesterday went through, let me just take you back. All right. The frontal boundary that pressed through here, producing this band of storms right there. Now, you're looking at it on on on satellite, but that band of storms right there was one of the more interesting parts of the entire day because the meteorologists that are on staff for these race teams, of course, we're telling them like, look, uh we we've got, sorry, I just got to reset there. we have got to change race strategy, cautions, red flags, pit stops, everything was going to change because of the rain that was pushing in.

[00:01:27]And there was enough rain that we were worried about it possibly just calling the end of the race uh versus delaying it. Now, it was also amazing to watch very very little, almost non-existent radar echoes on the Indianapolis radar.

[00:01:40]Yet, there was light rain in parts of the track. Just parts of it, not the whole thing, just little little bits of it. And to predict that days in advance is of course nearly impossible. But even to monitor it during the day was incredible. Now, of course, all my friends I was there with are giving me a lot of grief over this. But I'll be honest with you, I think it was the weather that created such an exciting Indie 500 this year. Sometimes that race is long and what you end up getting is a lot of patience by the drivers to get to the final, you know, 10 to 20 laps, staying on the lead lap. No, no. This was full of great racing and uh I don't know. I had a great time, but it has inspired me to work on some new things.

[00:02:18]Matt and I are cooking up a really cool, what I hope to be very, very useful tool that allow us to do better event prediction like this. Okay, sorry about all that. Uh, other things going on, huge convection Florida. Look at the storms down here in parts of Texas. And these were hailers yesterday. If we just get in there and have a look at the last 72 hours of total accumulated precipitation, all of this was needed, although there are some flooded out spots down here.

[00:02:44]And we're going to talk more about Texas and rainfall coming up. But rain into the northeast. Yes, a lot of the spring has been wet in the northeast and cool.

[00:02:50]But I like to see that we are still anticipating our hole through parts of Mid-Atlantic could fill in. But when you look at the severe storm reports yesterday, I'm going to zoom in on these up here in parts of South Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota. More hail. There was a report of a tornado here. And then uh farther down, farther to the south here, remember this was earlier uh in the weekend. numerous reports of small tornadoes, uh, hail and wind in parts of the western plains. And we've been discussing how are we going to be able to get moisture back into the plains.

[00:03:18]We're going to ask that question here of the forecast video in just a few moments. But seeing the rain getting into the southeast, more into the Carolinas, this is one of our areas that's deep in drought and has been for a while. If you look at the total precipitation and rank it according to the years 1893 to this year and we start on March 1st. So this is all of spring.

[00:03:41]Uh this is what we still have. So now the discussion just becomes more clear why we focus so much on the western plains. We do not anticipate the southwest to revive moisture until the monsoon settles in later on this summer.

[00:03:54]And yes, some of the models are predicting a huge southwest monsoon. Um, then there's been this region which was in drought and is now clearly out of drought. I mean, Missouri has been absolutely hammered. So much of the upper Midwest, Great Lakes earlier in this time frame, not as of late, but early in this time frame are extremely wet. And this just comes back to this idea of what, you know, we're going to watch evolve as we transition fully into our summer months here. Now, over the weekend, we watched the longer range models kind of tease out something like this. And what you've got here is the latest 15-day forecast from the European. Now, this is the operational run all 15 days looking at um precipitation anomalies. And we're very dry in the pattern here. And one of the big reasons high pressure going be a large area of high pressure that's going to settle into this area. Now, just to be clear, I've said this before, but when you look at this map, please do not assume that if you're on this side of the color bar, there is no rain. And if you're on this side of the color bar, you need to build an arc. That's not that's not what we're doing here. This is looking at the difference from normal. And we are in spring. I mean, this goes out to June the 8th. This is a normally very stormy time of for much of the country. All right. But it's the question about what's going to be forcing this pattern that I want to dig into. And then we build this out into the longer range. And right now, it's this. We have two troughs. There's one here over the Illutian Islands, one here just off the coast of British Columbia, and a larger ridge that's north of Hawaii. To the south of it, there is a piece of the subtropical jet. And you better get familiar with us talking about this over the next 6 to9 months.

[00:05:26]But what's going to happen in the near term is around the base of this trough, see how these winds are kind of coming from the southwest versus these coming almost from the north and making this hard turn. You're going to see in the models that this entire pattern is going to send a well a piece of the atmosphere, winds, stronger winds through here, allowing this load to sink farther into the west and cut itself off. It's going to live here separate from the main flow going forward. And that's going to be a major focal point for our weather patterns going forward.

[00:05:54]I want to show what it's going to look like here. So that's the trough we're talking about. Here's the other one over the ocean islands. I'm sorry, the map projections different of course than than this one, but you can see the two pieces here. And as we go forward in time, watch this low. Here it is. Cut itself off by the time we get into Tuesday. This is this time frame we've been watching, right? The 25th, 26th, 27th, and out ahead of it. just a very very large ridge where the heat that's in Montana today is going to continue to expand and spread throughout much of the northern tier of the United States. Now, this is going to create some unsettled weather, but it is going to be drawing in moisture back, which is going to feed off this subtropical jet, and that's going to increase our chances for rain in one of these very, very dry spots we've been watching. But sometimes when you see cutoff lows take shape like this with highs that almost build back over their northern edges, we get worried about the pattern sticking. But you know as we get up there to Thursday and Friday and Saturday you know that low gets absorbed into the flow there's a broader trough here and yes this is very amplified meaning that this heat that's going to be coming into this here is going to have some life to it some length to it but we're going to ask does it stick around for long and here we are at the June 2nd 3rd and fourth and we've got some big questions about what this pattern's going to do because take a look in the operational euro brings it back. So that's why there's a lot of high pressure here and a lot of low pressure here or here. And that's what seems to be driving these next 15 days when looking at this map. Now, we got some details to dig into with this. So, let's come in here and let's look at the National Weather Service all hazards map. So, again, we'll look at this again in a few moments, but um we have flooding issues down south. All right, some dense fog here this morning, but we're going to be watching winds and heat out west. Before we get much into that though, let's go look at what the Storm Prediction Center's got for today.

[00:07:45]They've got marginal risk across a few different areas. The pattern right now is not set up to produce a lot of severe weather. Uh that's the day on Monday.

[00:07:52]This is the day on Tuesday we're going to watch here. Okay. And then the day on Wednesday, I still think, you know, we're going to have to watch the planes a lot over the coming days, but it seems like right now that Tuesday is going to be down here, parts of Texas a spot to watch. But as that trough comes in, we're going to have to watch for storms here, too. All right. Now, we've taken a look at the European models uh kind of view of all of this. And I am I'm very excit I'm very close to being able to release this to all of you. I think I've got the bugs all worked out. Let's get in there and look at the her. This is the 6E run from this morning. I've got this queued up for about when I'm recording. I'm a little after 7 o'clock.

[00:08:29]Sorry I'm so late. But as we play this forward, this is going through uh this afternoon or this evening. Widespread convection. Okay, throughout the mountains, storms in parts of Mississippi, uh, getting into Alabama and Georgia here. There's the main front. That was the front that caused the rain, uh, in the Indy500 over the weekend, spreading itself out across the Mid-Atlantic. And as we play later into the day, this is now getting into the overnight hours into early morning on Tuesday. Watch for some scattered storms here, but there's your bigger trough, and there's your stalled out boundary.

[00:09:01]And so, as we play it forward, this is now getting out to Tuesday afternoon and evening. A lot of scattered storms in the south, some in parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin. Look at what's going through Texas is where the area we're watching on Tuesday in Texas, right? That's where that slight risk is. But there's your cutoff. And that's why we have to be aware of the chances for storms in this area as this cutoff low just keeps sinking farther and farther into the Great Basin eventually. So, that just gets us one one model out there. So, let's go out and um how about we switch this over to just the WPC and get a good look at total precipitation. Okay, so I'm working on a kink right here. I'm going to see if this fixes itself.

[00:09:40]Should fix itself after about seven or eight seconds. It didn't. So, I I'm still working on that. I'll get it done.

[00:09:46]But, um let's go out here and let's look at total preip from the WPC.

[00:09:52]Now, if you look out the next seven days, and I left it on this color bar, I think a lot of you like this one better.

[00:09:56]The total precipitation could be extremely wet across the south. Many locations picking up two to three inches of rainfall with possib possibly some spots, you know, grabbing three or four, maybe five inches in through this area.

[00:10:09]But if we compare to some other models, let's go back to the European. We can go out past seven days with the European.

[00:10:16]You just notice that this pattern seems to be very much subjected to where the high versus low pressure sits. That's 15 days from the European right there.

[00:10:26]Okay. Now, watch this. Let's go over to um how about sea level pressure? Where do I have that? There it is. I'm going to zoom out and show you a little differently here. Now, we are getting into this time of year. We're watching these pressure patterns is going to be more of a lesson in looking for where high pressure creates weaker fronts than these deep lows that just traverse the country and and make just tons of rain along big fronts. But watch this. The farther out I go in the forecast, this is Wednesday into Thursday, I'm paying close attention to the Bermuda high and this high right here. So Thursday into Friday, let's get that off there.

[00:11:02]Saturday, Sunday. See this high pressure continuing to come back while lows spin themselves up like this around the broader upper level low which is sitting here. And what this is really creating is two areas of high pressure. One here and one there. And that is what seems to be suppressing all of the best rising motion here, here, and there. Okay, watch these highs very, very carefully.

[00:11:25]Now, we can flip this over and say, uh, let's go have a look at precipitation type and intensity. can zoom in a little bit more here and take you back European model run. So, this is getting us through the day today, 8 o'clock tonight into Tuesday. Now, again, we're going to watch for bigger storms here, but scattered storms there and possibly some coming in across the north. Watch the low showing up over the west. That's what's going to bring the storms in here early this week. But there's that high and it just suppresses motion to the south. Look at all that. And these lows can't seem to get through this guy. So, one comes up like this. low pressure stays farther to the south. It's a dominant area of high pressure. Now, the last time we had a big El Nino building in spring. This also happened. It happened earlier in May, but in 2023, we saw a large area of high pressure that settled in here. And we're going to ask how long this one's going to last. And I think I've got at least an attempt at an answer for you as we go through these forecasts. All right. Um, now that's a couple of the things I want to show you.

[00:12:25]I want to also take you over to wind gusts. Now, I've taken off the uh you'll be able to do this when I give you this website, but you'll be able to take off the wind stream. So, you can turn them on or off because I'm looking at gusts.

[00:12:35]I don't want to see them, but I want to zoom in over here and just watch the west in this because as that cutoff low comes through, look at how strong these winds are in Oregon, Northern California, getting into the Great Basin here. We're looking at wind gusts that over the next, you know, 7 8 days, this got this about 10 days, things are pretty stagnant in here where the high pressure lives, but we're talking wind gusts that are possible throughout the western states, 40, 50, maybe 60 miles an hour at times. Um, very very interesting pattern that's developing with this upper level trough.

[00:13:08]Um, from here, we just need to figure out where, you know, where I think the overall pattern's going. So I'm going to switch over to the European ensemble and I'm going to take this up to 500 millibars again. Zoom out a bit and I want you to notice a couple of things around the world. So while the central part of the US is building this ridge and there's a cut off flow here, there seems to be a reflection of this in the North Atlantic across in Western Europe.

[00:13:32]See these two ridges? They they seem to be kind of working in concert together and this could put a lot of heat into Europe and dryness here. cooler over in this part of of of western Russia. As we play this forward, just wanting to see where we land about 10 days from now.

[00:13:47]Now, 10 days, look at how the North Atlantic is kind of cranking up on broader area of upper level low pressure here, but the United States almost has that split flow look to it. And I'm bringing this up because as we enter the month of June, some of our forecast models um you know are are giving us this drier signal. You can kind of see across all across the board here. There is the uh uh CPC, European, AFS, and GFS. Now, I said giving us why I always I mean us to me is the Midwest. All right, but look at this. Storms, storms, storms, storms.

[00:14:26]And the AI, this is not a hurricane in the AI, just to be clear. Uh it's just bringing this pulse of tropical moisture in here. It's an outlier, but it's worth watching. So, we're breaking down this pattern. And I just think that my mindset needs to be stuffed on this.

[00:14:40]This seems to be where things are shaping up for the next 15 days in terms of precipitation. Now, you know where we currently, well, if you don't, I'll just bring it up for you. This is the current drought monitor, right? This is released last year or last year released last Thursday. So, this is critical to get the rain in through here and all the rain that's going to be coming into this area. But, we're going to start to see dryness now where we've watched drought kind of disappear in the last few months. And that's that's why I started you off with this. Okay. Now, from this point going forward, let's talk temperatures. So, this is Nope, that's not the right map. Sorry about that.

[00:15:12]Let's go. Let this recreate. I forgot to click on one button there. We're going to bring this temperature map up in a minute here. But first, I want to show you the risk of frost in the next seven days. You bring in a ridge the size of the one we're talking about in the midsection of the country, and there's going to be no talk of frost. What we're going to talk about instead is heat.

[00:15:30]Like today up in Montana, we've got heat advisories. We've got red flag warnings and this particular corner of Montana is going to get very very hot. Let me show you what the zero Z run from the National Digital Forecast Database was predicting today. Uh these are actual highs forecast by the model. Now it's calmed down a little but still deep into the 90s here. Zooming out looking across the rest of the country. We're cooler south where the clouds are, but this is this is midsummer heat into this area.

[00:15:59]How long does it last? That's today, tomorrow. I mean, there's the chance that we're getting very, very hot here.

[00:16:06]I mean, temperatures well up above in the mid 90s, approaching 100. I know you're going, but that says 105. I understand. Uh, this is what the 00 run did. The subsequent runs have calmed down a little bit. Uh, this is getting into Monday the 20 u, excuse me, Wednesday the 27. That's when the low is here. So, see the cooler weather in the Great Basin in California. All the cloud cover and rain there heats to the north.

[00:16:30]My goodness, it's amazing to think we're going to be 20 degrees hotter in the Dakotas in Montana than we will be in Texas. Uh that's Wednesday. Uh Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So that heat sticking under that ridge for a while now. Back to the map.

[00:16:47]I screwed up. Don't forget this is how May has been up until this point, right?

[00:16:51]We've we've we've had the opposite. So we're really really changing this pattern a lot right now. Okay. Next thing I want to show you though, let's flip models again. Let's go over to the European Ensemble and I want to show you um let's do daily temperature anomalies here. Let's zoom out just a hair to see this whole pattern. So, we've seen this.

[00:17:10]This is today, tomorrow. Look at that heat. Cool weather west, cool to the south. That's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. You can see this beautiful view of what what is you know like this omega look here. Big high building in with all the heat. That is Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, getting out to early next week, Monday, Tuesday. See the cooler weather. This is cloud cover dominated. That's all that's going on here. Cloud and rain. And you saw it in the forecasts. Get all the way out there to this point, which is June the 8th.

[00:17:43]There's a lot of warmth up north. Now, thinking this through, I need to take us out beyond this. And I want to show you some things I'm watching. This is incredible. This El Nino building in has got some power to it. These are the zonal winds at 850. So this is uh about a mile above our heads across the across the ocean. You know where you are in the world is here. All right. And I think the ECMWF has a problem with their dates. So ignore these. This is actually now. Uh what you've got is this. This is sustained westerly wind bursts all the way probably until July. And what we're watching out of that is just this repositioning and this holding pattern of the MJO way over here in the Atlant, excuse me, in the Pacific, the Eastern Pacific. While there's a lot of subsidance in the Indian Ocean, look at that. That's MJ7 for a while. MJ Phase 8, MJO phase 1 781 just stuck. But there's been all this discussion and I've gotten asked this on radio interviews. people. I mean, even at the tailgate yesterday at the 500,00's like, "Tell me what's going on with this mega El Nino and what the heck is the southern oscillation index." They all they're all hearing these terms because they're going viral on social media.

[00:18:54]Now, I like to use out of Australia. Uh this is the long paddock uh site. It's government site from from Australia. It keeps great track and has a good history of what's called the Southern Oscillation Index. Now, what is the Southern Oscillation Index? Um, let tell you what. Let's just go over here. I'm bring up a current sea surface temperature map. It's measuring the pressure difference between Darwin and Tahiti. That's it. Now, why would we want to measure this? Well, we measure this because the pressure difference, all right, will ultimately tell us if we have trade winds blowing in this direction or that direction. And what I just showed you is they're trying to blow in this direction, which is the opposite direction of typical trademan behavior. And that's what we call El Nino. So I know everyone's like, well, we always look at the ocean. No, no. The ocean temperatures are the after effect.

[00:19:44]The cause of El Nino is the switching around of the tradewind pattern, which ultimately boils down to a change in global pressure patterns. You see, this all begins with heat and pressure. So the southern oscillation index when it goes negative, specifically below minus 7, that is when we consider the atmosphere to be in base elino state. So it is it's there now. and it has been dropping like a rock. We're expecting to continue to do that. Well, what does it mean when it drops like that? Well, I put together some composite maps for you. In June, we are drier here and it's stormier there in the southwest even and down here across the southeast. Does that not look exactly like the pattern I just mentioned to you? What happens in July? In July, this whole quarter tends to open back up with storms.

[00:20:37]and we seem to find ourselves with drier conditions in the northeast and and so that transition that's why we're watching June into July and I want to do this for you globally because this is what the discussion was there's talk about massive famine and and a lot of fatalities what we have to remember about 1877 was first of all in terms of infrastructure and supply chain and global access to everything from medicine to to to to infrastru everything. It was way different. But you got to remember where El Nino and the reversal of the trade winds impact the greatest. Initially, it's going to be over Indonesia, Malaysia, Papa New Guinea. Then it's going to be over the Indian monsoon. You can really see that in July. But these are our main drought corridors. And then later into August, September, October, it tends to be a lot in Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, the northern parts of uh of South America.

[00:21:37]And that's where the discussion needs to be. So if you want to be thinking globally what the impact is going to be, what is felt in the farther northerly latitudes or the farther southernly latitudes is nothing compared to what we get in the tropics. And that's why we're going to be concerned about this. Okay.

[00:21:53]So again, US June to July, these are composite events, 19 of them in June, 15 of them in July, where the southern oscillation index was below minus 7. And that's what we're looking at here. Okay, so this should make sense when I show you this. This is the newest forecast.

[00:22:11]In fact, let's just take it all the way out to the end of June. That's kind of the June prediction right there. And guess what? Stormier, stormier, drier.

[00:22:19]Can you see it? But watch this. As the model gets more of July into its forecast, do you see how this starts to shrink and moves south and this corridor starts to go back over stormier?

[00:22:34]And if you look, that's what we tended to see. Stormy in June, drier in July, drier in June, stormier in July. So, all of it connects. And by the way, writing within all of this, I know we we tend to separate things. I'm like, well, there's El Nino and then there's the MJO and the southern oscill. It's all the same thing. It's all shifting pressure and temperature patterns which result in shifting precipitation patterns. That's it. We don't need to take this past first principles. Yes, us nerdy scientists come up with a thousand different indexes and ways of talking about it, but that's all it is. It's just pressure pattern changes. So, we're going to watch. I I I I think I think the Europeans back onto something here that we need to discuss. And the good news is the model's been relatively wet east, which is an area that I always get concerned about being dry in this particular pattern. All right. What will be critical will be to see how the upper atmosphere responds. And I'm watching to see if this big ridge that's building into the east begins to find itself back farther to the west later later in the summer. That's been a worry of mine all along, big western ridges. Now, just to remind you, because we don't have any new longrange model data to talk about, these are the current predictions for precipitation this summer. And you've got uh over there on the left, you've got the European model and the NME. And on the right, I've got the IRI, that's out of Columbia University, and I've got the U Noah and the Clim Prediction Center. And these models, remember, we're grouping together three months, June, July, and August. And I'm just going to be frank with you, you know, there is um there's so much week- to-eek variability. So, what are we going to really be paying attention to this? First of all, what did we talk about last week? Gulf of Alaska, northeast Pacific temperatures. Over the last week, they've gotten warmer. You know, we did this last week. We know what this is going to do if that gets hotter next. Where's the MJO going to live? Sorry, this didn't update for several days. Uh, they're back on. I don't know what was going on, but is this the MJO thing going to go seven 6781 and just live here versus living over here or keep moving? That these are the triggers in the subseasonal forecast that we're going to keep a close eye on.

[00:24:49]All right, so that that's it. That's what you need to know. That's the narrative going forward. Please don't put too much weight into these. We're going to focus on the subseasonal forecast two three weeks at a time going forward. Now, I mentioned a couple things globally, and I just want to bring this back up to finish this up with you today. Here's our reflective heat waves taking a shape across the northern hemisphere.

[00:25:10]All right. Uh elsewhere though, look at precipitation. Where are we drier? Under those ridges. Where are we wetter? To the south and east of them. But have a look at this. This area of course stays and will stay very, very dry going forward. But this is critical. Rain into Queensland, New South Wales. That's been an area that's been under drought.

[00:25:31]They're getting some moisture and precipitation in place. Plus, if the models are right and we're getting a little bit of, excuse me, early season moisture into India, this is way ahead of the monsoon, but hey, it's in the opposite direction of a major drought setting up early. Keep an eye on the North China plane and the Manurion plane going forward, but we're quite dry across this region of China, which is normally the time of year we have the Mayu front interacting, bringing in some moisture to that area. So, a lot of great things to keep track of on the website. And by the way, if you're wondering where these maps are, just go to aweather.com, come over to weather maps, slide down to the bottom, uh they're right down here, stacked up next to each other, 10day preip anomaly and temperature anomaly maps. So, that's all I got for you today. I hope Memorial Day is is uh great for you, and we will uh we'll all talk soon. Thank you.