May 8, 2026: Windy April | Heat Spreading East (finally) | Late May Pattern Shift & Storms in Plains

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Well, good morning everybody. Uh here's a quick rundown of today's forecast video after we talk about some of the near-term things we've been watching like the snow and parts of the uh the Rocky Mountains. Um I want to get into where I think this pattern is going to be taking us, which is ultimately going to be opening up quite a bit of warmth finally after we get through Mother's Day weekend a little bit beyond across the rest of the country. We're going to see the reorientation of the jetream to deliver some southwest flow. I think that's going to be critical for the drought that's in parts of the western plains. Uh, and then I'm going to stretch this out as far as I can. And I want to put a couple of caveats on this El Nino event that's coming up. So, we're going to do all of that. Uh, if you want to get to the long range stuff, just come to about right here where I have the drop monitor tab and and then and watch that. Uh, but just you've been staring at the map of the last 72 hours of snowfall and yeah, we had along the Palmer Divide some places picking up 6 to 10 inches of snow. We saw farther into the mountains pockets of over 2 feet of snow and this was great late season water uh that we needed to get into this area. I did want to see if I could find it on satellite and just kind of watch the snow melt because of course it got so warm after this event, even warm later on that day, but it was already all gone. Like you can't see it stretching out into this area, but that's that's common for this time of year. What I was a little bit interested in is the later I went into the kind of forecast, I noticed there's a lot of haze across the uh the Gulf, and I noticed there's quite a bit even here uh coming out of parts of western Canada.

[00:01:21]And as I kind of looked a little closer, I'm like, well, are there any fires up in in Canada that I' I've somehow missed. And I didn't see any, you know, largecale fire activity here, but there's still quite a bit of haze in the sky. When I just look at the satellite data, it is nice to see how much snow pack is still left, you know, in the mountain, you know, this part of the Rocky Mountains as they go farther and farther north along the west coast of North America. And that's all snow that will eventually get into like the Columbia Basin just as one example here as we go forward uh in this forecast.

[00:01:51]But speaking of kind of skies obscured with smoke, there was a fire yesterday in parts of Oregon right here and you can see it and it was just a pretty large fire here putting up a smoke plume that stretched all the way across the eastern part of the state by the time we got later in the day there. Now, thinking of all that, I did kind of promise you something on uh Wednesday's video and I did the analysis now that all the data are in for the month of April on where for the whole uh for the central United States. I've been focusing primarily on the central United States in this analysis uh what the wind speed looked like compared historical averages. And here are the last five years. Uh and then here's this year. So 2026 was 68 standard deviations above the mean. And I'm just getting asked a lot, is there some sort of trend in wind speeds that um you know that we need to be aware of that are that are affecting um you know overall what's going on in in the in in spring specifically. And I did not have the time I apologize to drend this. Uh we're all three working hard on a new project for you and uh we just need to we just need every available ounce of time to get that project done. Uh but just take a look.

[00:03:01]That's that's the data and then here's the map. Now, we had talked earlier, uh, Matt did, uh, about the the big, um, you know, dust storms that were going through parts of Illinois. And it's just important to note that in central Illinois, just of course, this is home for me, you know, we were well over two standard deviations above the mean in the month of April. Uh, in terms of winds, it was calmer down in the southeast. We had some calmer winds in pockets of the plains and then along the west coast, uh, but certainly coming off the mountains, very, very strong winds at times here. So, I just want to give you that analysis just so you could see it. Now, last night the winds were relatively calm right in through this region. And that's where we had um our frost kind of risk in Wisconsin, Michigan, and also here pushing up against the Appalachin Mountains. Uh we had we had frost, but there are red flag warnings back on the back side of this.

[00:03:46]That's mainly due to how dry Oops, sorry. I'll show you that in a second.

[00:03:48]It's how dry it's been in pockets up here as of late. But we're going to have to watch what these winds are going to do later today because as you can see early this morning, there's a little bit of a boundary here. And there's risk of severe storms to the south of this as this little boundary slides farther and farther to the south. Um, from here, let's just go I'll show you the winds gust in just a few seconds. We'll we'll hang on to that. Uh, but since I mentioned the frost, let's keep a discussion going with temperatures. How your first seven days of May have shaped up. So very hot in the northwest. That's underneath that omega block. like we've talked about all week, much much colder here after what had been record setting March and April. We've talked about that uh extensively uh very very cold air to get this uh new month of May started.

[00:04:33]But this is going to be replaced. We're going to watch warming conditions move across the country very very soon.

[00:04:38]They've already started actually. Just look at the 24-hour temperature difference between right now and yesterday, Thursday morning. We're cooler east as the front sags through, but already the temperatures on a big rebound in the midsection of the country. All right, frost risk over the next seven days. Much different looking map, right? We're now starting to see that frost risk move way far to the north. It is not uncommon to have a second week of May frost risk here and then in the interior of the north uh northeast, excuse me. So, there's nothing about this map that's alarming overall. But, let's take a look at what the temperatures are going to do. Let's blow this up a little bit. All right, here are today's max temperatures. Now, watch this heat come out of the west and spread into the central US. This is today's highs getting into Saturday.

[00:05:21]There's a little cooler conditions coming across the Great Lakes. We're cooler south. You'll see the rainfall down there in a moment. That's Mother's Day. So, Mother's Day's got this shot of cooler air still wrapping around the upper level low that's sitting here.

[00:05:32]Just tremendous heat in the west as the ridge sits there. But watch it open up.

[00:05:37]Ready? That's Monday. We're in the 90s in Nebraska and in South Dakota.

[00:05:42]Tuesday, this spreads farther to the east. We get out there toward Wednesday and Thursday of next week. And now we're seeing 80s. You know, I got Mitchell, South Dakota at 83. Grand Forks at 78.

[00:05:53]Lot of warmth spreading through. And it's even going to get into the Canadian Prairie as well, which you're going to see in just a moment. To look at that though, I need you to understand this pattern. And this is what Matt and I have been harping on all week. Ready?

[00:06:03]Deep trough in the Northeast, in the Great Lakes, in the Hudson Bay in Eastern Canada. It's still there through Mother's Day. There it is. That's that last push of colder air coming in through this part of the US. There's the ridge causing all that heat on Mother's Day and then it opens into the central US. See it? And that opening starts to push the colder air east. There's Tuesday's little short wave sneaking through parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin.

[00:06:29]And that could be the last little wave that comes around the broader trough that's trying to leave. So this is this postmother's day warm-up that I've been, you know, trying to understand and figure out. Now 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th.

[00:06:44]Now watch once we get out there to start that third week of of May. This has been a consistent feature and we've talked a lot about this, right? This return of southwest flow. Now these are the kind of waves that open up for longer transport of moisture getting here. And you say why?

[00:07:04]Well, if we build in some high pressure here, we're going to aid the moisture return farther and farther back to the west. And the little shorties are going to wiggle their way over the mountains and initiate storms in this area. And we've got this thought process going that the end of May, beginning of June could finally bring us more severe storms to a place where we've just been unable to get them consistently. As you know, they've been much more closer to the Mississippi Valley. And lately down south, which has seen a lot of severe weather uh in in in the recent days. So, this is the trough we're all paying attention to, and we're going to keep a close eye to see if that does develop in that third week of um of the month of May. Now watch what what it's going to do to the reorientation of the temperature pattern. You've already seen today, Saturday, Sunday, there's Mother's Day. That's the cool here. Heat out west. Monday, Tuesday, it all opens up into the plains. Cooler air exits east. And here we go. We start to see more mild air flood across the country as we get to the 16th, 17th, 18th. And that warmer air is likely going to be a feature of the second half of this month across the middle part of the country and eventually making its way to the east. There still seems to be a bit of a hold out on cooler conditions throughout the Canadian prairie uh in this forecast. It's it's not as cold as we saw back in April where we were talking about feet of snow in places like central Saskatchewan, but um we are just beginning to watch the moderation of the pattern. It's both seasonal, but I think it's also a bit more telling about how we're going to be dropping a trough off the West Coast. All right. Okay. From here, the new uh GFS extended, that's week two. So, day 8 through 15, this gets us out to the 22nd of May. And as I play it forward, there is the risk of hanging on to some cooler weather in the Northeast longest to finish May and maybe start June. But overall, this is a very mild pattern moving into the beginning of June if you're in the central and western part of the United States. Again, I still think that the models are biased to cold in this area. uh simply because of of of of hanging on to persistence in the pattern. But we're going to watch some I mean we're going to watch a big ridge open up in the midsection of the country not too far away from now within within 5 days. Okay, starting west and then moving east. So that'll be critical uh critical piece to watch. Now I'm going to be honest with you. While I am buying into the temperature pattern being forecast by these models, I am not buying in at all to the precipitation forecast by these extended models. And we're going to get to that in a second, but I want to give you some stats first.

[00:09:34]The Northwest across the northern tier of um getting into Montana, the Dakotas, the upper Midwest, very dry start to the month of of May here. We've seen great moisture getting down south. Yes, a lot of severe weather we saw the other day, but there's moisture down here and we've needed this. The Mid-Atlantic is still holding out. It's still not yet had despite even some of the recent rain that's come through there enough corrective action to eliminate the longer standing drought, not just what's going going on in May, but there will be some big changes down here uh into Oklahoma and they're going to start very soon with the risk of some strong storms coming through that area. Here's our quick look at the Storm Prediction Center. You can see Oklahoma from the Red River here all the way up to the Kansas border. That's today. Getting into tomorrow, it's going to back up, you know, to this side of Oklahoma, almost into Texas. And then as we get into um uh Sunday, yeah, this is Mother's Day, we're going to watch that front sag a bit farther to the south, uh bringing in some severe weather into central Texas, getting over to parts of southwestern Arkansas. Heaviest rains according to the Climate Prediction Center is pretty far to the south along the Gulf Coast where we recently had some heavy rains. And I want to just show you the high res um high resolution rapid refresh model starting about 6:00 a.m. this morning as to where the model's predicting things are going to go by midday today. Again, more showers rolling across this same area which we've had a tremendous amount of rain.

[00:10:59]But late in the day, watch the tail end of that front coming into parts of Oklahoma and the risk of those stronger storms. So, we have this event to keep an eye on here. heavier rains along the Gulf Coast and then we can play this into the overnight hours and get us out there to early tomorrow morning on Saturday and get we'll get pretty late in the day on Saturday. Here's Saturday afternoon and evening and you can see what this radar presentation looks like here by the models keeping an eye on Nebraska and Kansas just bringing some moisture through and the risk of some storms coming through that region as well as this low curls its way up into parts of um Quebec here. All right, that's just a quick look at the high resolution uh rapid refresh model, the HU her. You can get in there on the website, look at it as well anytime you want. All right, from there, I got this too far ahead.

[00:11:46]Let's go back to the beginning. Let's see what the WPC says in terms of total preip. So that's through Saturday. So there's your sacking front, your risk of severe storms, your heavy rain across the south. We play it forward, that's getting us out there to Tuesday into Wednesday.

[00:12:01]And overall for the next seven days, some of those places that have been very dry, like the Northwest, like this region here, not picking up much moisture. We're still drier on this nose that extends into parts of the Mid-Atlantic. There is some, it's not much, but there is some moisture moving here. You saw that in the next, you know, 48 hours, but outside of that, we're not adding too much precipitation into that area. To give you a sense on the timing of these events, let's just go over to the European model. It's it's right now a better performer I think when you look statistically we've already seen through this that's Saturday into Sunday. So this is 7 a.m.

[00:12:37]Sunday on Mother's Day. This is uh midday again. Thankfully some of the rainfall chances have backed off uh in some of these areas that have been so very wet. Now we're getting out to Monday. High pressure settles in. This is a cool shot. Remember that we're bringing in cooler air here. But warmth is spreading on Monday deeply into the plains. It's going to be hot. And Tuesday, little wave sneaks through here. We do need to start to question if it's going to be cold enough on the backside of that upper level low. It's sitting up here to drive in some risk of snow into this area. European model's picking up on it. That's Wednesday. Next Thursday's coming through. There is a system moving into the northwest. See it over there? That's Wednesday night into Thursday. And then we're going to play this out to Friday, Saturday the 16th. And what we're going to be watching late in the time period is this. That's the 17th and 18th. Do you see all this? This is what happens when the atmosphere dips a trough in here and high pressure sits off the southeast coast. We're just pushing that moisture farther back. We need to watch to see what that's going to do in terms of increasing the chances of rainfall.

[00:13:44]Now, certainly over the next week, that area is dry. So is this area, right? We saw that in the models with only the little region in through here having a decent chance of grabbing some moisture.

[00:13:52]So the chance of staying under a half inch is highest where you see the high probabilities. But as I add in more time, what I'm really watching is to see this go away.

[00:14:05]Take note though, we do have parts of the mids south over toward the northern parts of the southeast getting up toward the Appalachian Mountains that is drier as well. Okay, that week 2 forecast though is starting to telegraph what we think is going to happen. Do you see how in week two in all the models we're opening this up? See, it's even in the GFS over here. And that is where we think that western trough is going to have its greatest influence.

[00:14:31]Now, these long range models, as I mentioned, I just they're not they're not telegraphing what we what we meteorologists think is going to happen in the pattern. And from now till June 6th, it's very dry. But this model, and I'm going to talk about this again in a moment, but the longer range, this model is exhibiting very, very strong persistence bias. So, I'm asking it to tell me what's going to happen all the way out to June 6th. And what you need to see is this. Um, if I take you back, there's there's the next week, right?

[00:15:01]We're pretty familiar with that. Uh, that's week two.

[00:15:06]Now, look what happens as we go into week three. So certainly we're going to watch this open up into week two. But into week three, okay, there it is. But beyond that, there's just no signal, right? I mean, that's the beginning of June. This is now getting into the second week of June. You're like, "Oh, wait, wait. Is there a signal here?" Well, okay. The model's trying to wake this up to more precipitation. But I'm telling you, I just don't feel like these models have locked in to any sort of a useful signal um out there. And you you watch us all week show it to you, right? We're like, "Oh, look. This is we're seeing this in May and then June's trying to just open this up, but the models keep giving us a different look every day." So, for example, this is May 15 to June 15th, today's forecast. Here's yesterday. You know, here's the day before. So, I I guess you could say there's some consistency here in the model going over Stormy in June, but it's not as though it's I mean, look, that's the newest run. It's it's it's flopping around a lot, and it just does that. It just gets frustrating when you you're trying to diagnose this critical month for so many people in the central United States growing these summer crops as to what what this is going to do. I buy into the temperature pattern. I'm just a bit um skeptical on the preip.

[00:16:17]All right. One thing though that's important is if we do end up dropping that western trough and waking this area up to better chances of moisture and possibly even pushing it up into Nebraska, that's huge. We know we're expecting more rain here. This region is a bit drier, okay, going forward. But we are working against what we see on the drought monitor here at the very beginning of May. And there's a lot about this drop monitor that's very concerning. So, for example, if you're in one of the areas that's in white, you know, here, well, the concern is that we could fill this in from any direction should the pattern set up that way. If you're already in significant deficit on moisture, there's just major risk going forward in terms of of drought because you're going to ask like is is there any moisture, you know, in the soil with us right now. And while we've been flooding out and causing a lot of issues down south, mid-Atlantic still dry, big sections of the western cornbt are dry, the western plains are dry, and we're just waiting to see how this May pattern shapes up to deliver better moisture.

[00:17:17]And that's just still something that I don't think the models have caught on to yet. And that's okay. It's just it's part of the job. We we sometimes have tremendous confidence in the models and other times we don't. So, there's something bigger though that I'm thinking about here and I want to talk to you about it as we stretch this out past May into June. Let's just go ahead and look. But here's where we currently stand on things. You know, you've seen these forecasts of Elino. I'm going to show you both of the big ones that have come out lately. But this is a time series I created uh looking at the sea surface temperature anomalies in the middle of the equatorial Pacific. It's very common. These are all over the place. And at the beginning of April, we were just 23 degrees C above average.

[00:17:55]And the big dogs were 2015. Oh, sorry, that was 2023. Here's 2015 in 1997. You know, you got the 1982 event, the 19 uh 72 event, which is here. And as we look at all of these, I want you to see something. That was the beginning of April. Since the beginning of April, right here, the ocean temperatures have climbed up another almost a full degrees Celsius. just to be honest with you. And as you look, this warm water still has a chance to surface. And a lot of this is going to be in that Nino 3 region, which we talked about earlier in the week. All right, so this El Nino, we're just building confidence that it's not just going to be a moderate or strong. It could be very strong. Now, we looked at this on Monday or Wednesday, sorry. This is the new forecast from the European model, which about 40% of its ensemble members are producing an historic Eln.

[00:18:47]You say, why historic? Well, I think our strongest ever are like 28 degrees C above average. Like that's what they've been. And now we've got several of our ensemble members predicting over three. But the new national multimodel ensemble came out as well. And if you look at its average, it's up there at 2.7 with several of its ensemble members going off the top of their graph. So they need to make a scale adjustment on their y- axis. Now, we look at all of that and I want to remind you of this. because I sometimes feel a massive overattribution that I am personally guilty of of thinking like, well, El Nino is going to dominate everything. It's just it's just what it does. So, I I made a graph for you. I used the era 5 data and I wanted to look at moderate to strong El Nino events that peak in November, December, January, which is when we think these are all going to peak, right? So, there it is going up. And I said, well, what what are the correlations in those years? You see them listed here. All right. what are the correlations in those years with global precipitation pattern and I said let's kind of keep it real on on this and if you have a look at this I mean the the strongest correlations are in the tropics which is why we keep going on about May June July Indonesia Malaysia Papa New Guinea like look at these look at this drought signal all the way to the end of the year and we worry about summer Indian monsoon and you go well what's going on in the United States well I mean there's not strong correlation here.

[00:20:21]This is it's just not there. And as a result, um we have to understand that, forgive me, um El Nino is a background feature. It's a big one, but when we get into the heart of northern hemisphere summer, I mean, it there are other factors that tend to really really drive this. Now, I let the color bar go all out here to minus4 to plus4. I mean, if I brought it down to one one, you'd start to see certain features showing up. Like, we do expect this winter to be very wet across the southern tier of the United States. No doubt about that in my mind right now, but we're not there yet. We still we're still in the heart of spring and we'll come up to this later and talk more about it. But let's just go have a look at something here. So, I said, "Well, all right. Uh, tell me what happened in the last couple of big Elnino events."

[00:21:14]and June, July, August. This is what the temperature pattern looked like in 1997.

[00:21:21]That was the temperature June, July, August compared to the 1980 to 2020 average. And you notice a lot of North America except for the Canadian Prairie, especially United States, was was mild.

[00:21:33]Okay. Um, let's go look at the precipitation pattern. So, where is it?

[00:21:37]Right there. This again is 1997.

[00:21:41]And we're going to look at the anomalies. Um, It wasn't as though there was widespread midsummer drought issues. Now, yes, the farther we got into the Gulf and down into Central Mexico into Central America, it was drier, but I don't see any large signal like big bullseye of mega drought. Yeah, we're a little drier right there. Kansas City, you know, to Omaha, maybe over to De Moine, back to Columbia, a little drier in the Northeast, a little drier in Ontario, but not not a strong signal. What about the other one uh recently? Okay, that would be the 2015 big El Nino event. So, let's go in there and have a look at what happened in June, July, August of 2015. We were drier south, cotton belt took on drought, very wet to the north of it. Why? These are all ridge riders and drier in the northwest. That was 2015. Uh, temperatures. So, again, we're just examining our recent Elnino events as a proxy for what might happen. It was hot south. I mean, yeah, okay, makes sense. It's hot where it was dry.

[00:22:42]Now, what what do we expect out of this?

[00:22:44]Well, you've seen the models. Here's the European model, June, July, August forecast.

[00:22:50]And I'm going to tell you something. I I really think that this model has been subjected to some initial conditions issues. In other words, it's trying to project what it's doing over the next, I don't know, couple of weeks. It carries it. It doesn't seem to shake it. But that's the summer precipitation forecast. And I'm I'll just as I look at it, I'm like where I don't get the trying to find the material value of examining this. It's a it's a bit of a patchwork here later into summer. This is uh June, July, August.

[00:23:22]You know, it's trying to go drier upper Midwest, western cornbt may what is this? An active southwest monsoon is projecting. Are we going to be hotter and drier in the northwest? But certainly not dry down here, which is what I've been worried about.

[00:23:36]So let's look at another model. The NME came out. That's the June, July, August forecast. And again, it's got more of this region painted drier with wetter on either side, wetter throughout the Canadian prairie, part of the Canadian prairie, excuse me. And then this is its forecast for July, August, September, huge southwest monsoon.

[00:23:59]Um, let's think about it like this. If I used all those Eastbay Delninos, I've shown you this a dozen times. My my concern is when you stitch them all together and 97 and 15 are both in this.

[00:24:11]My worry is that we're drier here. I just think it tilts the odds toward a a Gulf problem and all the surrounding well countries and states, maybe a Mid-Atlantic problem, maybe an Ontario issue with drier, but I see this region seeing a lot of storms.

[00:24:28]when I just use history and we've talked about the rest of the world many times.

[00:24:31]You can see it again on the map. But if this is going to go over wetter, then this makes sense to me. And I showed this to you earlier in the week that we would not have excessive heat in this region.

[00:24:43]But given all of that, can I just remind you of something? This is all based on discussing, you know, El Nino and El Nino in spring, El Nino in late fall, El Nino in winter.

[00:24:56]It's a hu the correlations are incredibly strong but in summer it's not I told you this earlier El Nino where I just did this analysis where I live El Nino can only explain 9% of the variance in the weather pattern in the Midwest in summer. So we have to be careful with this. Where is the variance coming from?

[00:25:15]Well in summer it's all about jetream position. Is it more north? Is it more south? And where's the Bermuda high which I'm still working on that Bermuda high index. I'm very interested in something about these ocean temperatures. Can I show you a different view of this? Friend, colleague Levi Cowan, he's got this incredible site. I know you've all seen it before. Tropical tidbits. This is what is very interesting to me. If you look at the ocean temperatures compared to the global average today, not the historical average, but the global average. All right, this is an interesting thing.

[00:25:47]So, cold, cold, warm. What is that pattern going to do to influence the Bermuda high? We have the very warm Pacific meridian mode and an Elnino that's emerging. But you better watch here. Now, it doesn't matter that it's cold in early May. If I come back and it's if it's June 28th and it's still cold there, then that's a signal that the Midwest has some dryness coming into it. That's the This is the more dominant signal right there. And then off the coast of California in the Baja toward North American summer precipitation and temperature patterns.

[00:26:24]And so that's what I'm going to be watching going forward right here. El Nino is important, but it's as you saw, it's more of a tropical dominant feature that has influences in the extratropics.

[00:26:34]Of course, that would be where most of you listening to me right now are. Um, so let me give you this. I went ahead and made a forecast graphic that I think that the National Weather Service and the Climate Prediction Center are going to release to us on midmon just as a experiment. I think that this is what they're going to show in their next update which will be like the 16th 17th.

[00:26:55]That's when they'll release it. I think this is what they're going to give you.

[00:26:58]Active southwest monsoon, drought risk across the south, heat and drought in the northwest. Big heat low in through this area which is going to draw that monsoon up. And I bet if they bring in high pressure closer to the Gulf of Alaska, which is what would happen if these ocean temperatures warmed up, they're going to talk about a lot of northwest flow and storms in this area.

[00:27:22]That is what I think they're going to do.

[00:27:25]And they're going to keep it cool here.

[00:27:27]So, let's just uh watch it and see. Just give you something to think about over the weekend. Just hand you this and just to give you an idea. Okay, everyone. I really appreciate your attention with us this week. We had a lot to cover and I hope you have a good safe weekend. To all the mothers out there listening, happy Mother's Day. You make the world go round and we know it. So, uh, be safe, have a good weekend. We'll talk soon. Thanks.