Sunday May 17 2026 Severe weather ideas for Monday & Tuesday

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Hi, this is Tim Pregan, and it is Sunday, May 17th, 2026. And uh just want to kind of give you an idea of uh the outlook here for severe weather for Monday and Tuesday.

[00:00:11]Um I'm going to open this by saying I have very low confidence in what's going to happen tomorrow. Uh there are so many different scenarios that the models can show that uh it's really tough to hang your hat on something.

[00:00:23]But uh I'll just show you the different scenarios, and uh just kind of tell you what I'm thinking overall.

[00:00:28]But again, uh you know, tomorrow could go many different ways, and even Tuesday depending on the timing of the front on Tuesday. If the front comes through early in the morning on Tuesday, I think uh the severe threat will be low.

[00:00:40]But some of the models don't have the front coming in through until early to mid-afternoon. And it has the atmosphere ready to go for severe with that front coming through. So, that's another question. So, just wanted to uh kind of go over things here.

[00:00:54]And again, uh just uh my two cents.

[00:00:57]So, um first of all, here's the satellite for today.

[00:01:01]Uh you can see here uh there's some cumulus clouds across Missouri. Here's St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago. Uh clear skies out through here. But uh just, you know, fair weather cumulus clouds. It's warm, it's humid, it's windy today. And uh we're not going to see much in the way of any showers with thunderstorms today.

[00:01:20]Um you can see right here up in the right around Sioux Falls got tornado warnings with this blow up of storms.

[00:01:26]And we're going to start seeing some storms developing along the front here around the dry line. You can actually see it starting to go right through here.

[00:01:33]And that's going to be the development of the uh severe weather out through here this afternoon. And this is what possibly can come and get us overnight into tomorrow morning.

[00:01:42]And that will lay the foundation of what may happen tomorrow.

[00:01:45]So, let's go to the uh this is the uh infrared satellite. I thought this is pretty neat. Here's your upper trough digging in right here. And you see the blow up of storms here and the new storms developing out through Nebraska and Kansas. That's caused by this little jet streak that's coming around the base of the trough. The jet stream is just like this, comes right up in here, and you get your lift right on the right side of that, and that's what's happening right through here for the severe weather.

[00:02:11]So, let's take a look at the the first model here. This is the HRR.

[00:02:16]HRR is one of the models that really has got me kind of confused. It brings in a some showers and thunderstorms in the morning, maybe some gusty winds with it, and then it just keeps showers and thunderstorms just kind of lingering around during the day.

[00:02:30]But the morning storms basically taking away the instability, and so it really has a low severe weather severe weather threat for us here tomorrow. It also brings a front through really early on Tuesday, and that limits the severe weather threat. So, the HRR is basically one that would say not much is going to happen, but we will see some showers and thunderstorms. So, this is what it's looking like now. See the storms developing here around Sioux Falls and in Nebraska.

[00:02:55]And you can see it developing across Kansas and the northwest Missouri, goes through Kansas City here about 4:00 in the morning. And then it works its way across the state. This is like 10:00 tomorrow tomorrow morning, and it brings that line of showers and thunderstorms through. It does show some gusty winds to 50 on some of the parameters, but that would be about it.

[00:03:18]And you can see it just holds on showers and thunderstorms. This is 4:00 now.

[00:03:22]It's still got rain and thunderstorm, but nothing severe around the boundary, and it just moves it off to the east, and then it brings in the Tuesday morning stuff. This is like 6:00 a.m.

[00:03:34]So, it's much quicker with the front, and basically this pushes it through, and basically just a a non-severe event with that. The NAM 3 is also very similar to that. As we move across here, the showers and thunderstorms developing across Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.

[00:03:51]And you can see it brings through with a dying line of storms here uh Monday morning.

[00:03:56]And then basically it's just dry the rest of the day. And it kind of brings some more storms in Tuesday morning, but again it's real early with the front and limits the severe weather for us.

[00:04:09]So that's the NAM 3.

[00:04:11]Now the NAM is a little bit different.

[00:04:13]Um it keeps the storms north of us and and it and just wanted to show you this. It still has this decent shortwave coming across here uh tomorrow afternoon. This is like 4:00. And again I I I'm not sure why it's not wanting to print anything out.

[00:04:28]It's got a cap a little bit, but we'll see what happens. But if this can break the cap I think tomorrow afternoon we could see some severe weather uh if the NAM is correct. So let's take a look at the uh uh precipitation with this.

[00:04:42]So here we go with the uh precept. It goes the showers and thunderstorms up here. Really doesn't develop much uh down through here at all and basically keeps this mostly north of us overnight and through the morning hours tomorrow.

[00:04:56]You can see that here. It tries to bring something in here early afternoon. Uh and that might be with that shortwave.

[00:05:03]Uh and then it moves off to the east and it's quiet. And then here's Tuesday morning. This is uh 6:00 a.m.

[00:05:09]No, this is 7:00 a.m. then 10:00 a.m.

[00:05:11]and then around noon time and then you can see here it finally brings the front through during the early afternoon.

[00:05:17]So you can see here uh that would bring a severe chance uh for us. So let's just kind of take a look at a sounding around here about that time. Uh let's go right about here.

[00:05:27]And let's see what it looks like.

[00:05:31]And it's got the uh it's got that sounding. Got some big cape, 4,000 plus.

[00:05:36]It's got the tornado tornado parameters.

[00:05:38]Uh decent lapse rates. Shear's not the best, but it's enough and some good cape through the hail zone. So this would be uh the sounding for Tuesday afternoon off the NAM.

[00:05:50]And if you want to take a look at the sounding tomorrow afternoon, when that shortwave is coming across, that'll be about right about here.

[00:06:00]Right about here. Let's take a look at this.

[00:06:02]And you can see the NAM here.

[00:06:05]Uh it has a pretty good sounding. There is a little cap right here. You see this CIN right here? It's about 28/36.

[00:06:12]It's It's small, but it's enough to keep you know, air rising. So, depends on if that cap breaks tomorrow afternoon. So, that's what I'm laying my head on. But, if it doesn't, we may just go away with some showers in the morning and then rest of the afternoon is dry. And then we'll have that showers and thunderstorms on Tuesday. So, next I want to do is is the European. What you try to look for in these situations are boundaries. And I just wanted to kind of show you what the European is showing.

[00:06:39]It basically has a line coming here through this evening, but dying.

[00:06:44]And then if you look here, this is the main low right here across the Oklahoma Panhandle. And here's the main front that goes up through here.

[00:06:52]Okay? But, you can also see there's a boundary here. See how these isobars are kind of looped into the right? That's a boundary right there. And you can see the storms developing right along that boundary with the European. This is This is in the morning.

[00:07:06]And then by afternoon, this is uh See how the boundaries is laying out right here? This is about 11:00 a.m.

[00:07:14]10:00 11:00 a.m.

[00:07:15]And then by noon, it's got the storms on top of us right along that boundary. And it's got a pretty decent sounding with the with the European on this.

[00:07:25]It's got very little CAPE. I very little CIN, I mean, no CAPE. But, it does show some okay lapse rates. And it does have some pretty good you know, this is the CAPE here through the hail zone. So, that would be a chance for some hail with the with the European. And that would be during the day on Monday. And then the European on Tuesday is also a little bit later with the storms. Here's the front.

[00:07:50]Right here. This is about 11:00. And then this is noon. And it's got the front right here and it produces some more showers and thunderstorms there. So again, confidence is low.

[00:08:01]What happens overnight tonight surely is going to impede what might happen tomorrow or maybe if it lays out of boundary, it could be the focus for some storm during the afternoon. But the main force and the main severe weather threat should be off to the west tomorrow.

[00:08:17]And then closer to us on Tuesday.

[00:08:20]Depends on the timing of that front. So I wish I could, you know, give you a more confident idea of what's going to happen. But I'm really kind of befuddled. So But thanks for watching. And just keep in tune with Helo tomorrow.

[00:08:35]We'll keep you up to date if anything does break out. Thanks guys.