May 28th, 2026 | Severe Storms in the PNW, Watching Mid-June, Dust Devil Outbreak?

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Good morning. It's Thursday, May 28th, 2026. Meteorologist Andrew Pritchard. I am jumping in for Matt Rearen, who had a baby yesterday. Well, his wife had a baby, but welcoming their new daughter into the world. So, we're going to give him the morning off to deal with that.

[00:00:13]Uh, congratulations to Matt and family.

[00:00:16]Happy to jump in, though. And we've got, you know, my specialty here, my favorite thing to talk about, and it's severe weather in a very unusual part of the country. We have a slight risk here. I'm starting off with the Storm Prediction C Center's day one severe weather outlook in place across portions of the Pacific Northwest, Oregon into Washington, even portions of Idaho with a risk of supercells and maybe even a couple of tornadoes today. Now, we do have a risk for a couple of strong storms across the front range here uh of Colorado and that's a little bit more typical of this time of year. But I did want to start off just kind of talking about this high impact weather forecast in a particularly unusual part of the country. And again, here's the categorical risk, slight risk, marginal risk surrounding that tornado probabilities. We do have a 2% tornado risk here again across portions of Oregon, Washington, and Oregon, uh, Idaho. Got that risk for some wind, uh, and some hail as well. That risk across Colorado is predominantly for some large hail as well. But as we jump into the forecast viewer, it is this cutoff low that's spinning across the western US that's going to be uh bringing in that risk. We've got these kind of little patches of faster flow sometimes embedded within these bigger troughs overall. Now, these cutoff lows are not really, you know, renowned for having big potent short waves here, but we've got some impact from the subtropical jet. Got a couple disturbances in here.

[00:01:36]And as one of these rotates into the area, we're going to get going to get enough lift and we're going to have the ingredients there some instability for some thunderstorms. And with that potent wind shear in place from this trough, we're going to be able to organize those storms. And a few storms may even begin to rotate. So here's the upper level chart. This is 300 millibars. As we head through kind of the day today, this would be this evening. You can see this upper level low. And uh out ahead of that where we've got the upper level divergence, that is the upper level winds kind of spreading out, fanning out out ahead of kind of the short wave there. This is just a very unorthodox view. You would typically kind of see this trough ejecting across the central plains and you'd have the divergence out here across parts of you know the central US into the Midwest and that's where we talk about a lot of lift and instability and deep moisture being brought up from the Gulf. Well, we got kind of the same ingredients but just very unusual part of the country and kind of aligned in an unusual way as well with this being kind of on the uh north side here as these winds these upper level winds are kind of coming out of the the south. if you're going northerly and then northwesterly and then almost westerly here across the uh risk area. And that means that the upper level winds are going to be steering these storms in this kind of westerly direction. So we'll actually not only have severe storms in an unusual part of the country, but they'll be moving in an unusual kind of way, too. Moving from east to west in a lot of uh areas here.

[00:03:04]So let's let's check it out. Let's dive in a little bit closer. Again, here's the upper level chart, but if I drop down here, you know, we've got the upper level support with this cutoff low, and we've also got just enough instability.

[00:03:15]So, I'll kind of walk this back. Again, it's not going to be an off thecharts event, but we're talking about, you know, 3,000 jewels per kilogram of cape across the Pacific Northwest. I mean, that is moderate to strong instability, uh, with a potent cutoff low and some good upper level support. like we get this risk a couple of times a year uh for some strong storms across the western US. Sometimes it's the central valley of California and you know sometimes we do get these stronger storms uh in this risk across the Pacific Northwest, but this is one of the more robust and genuine risks where I'm like we could really get a significant supercell and maybe a tornado tracking through the uh the Pacific Northwest. I mean a substantial tornado or two across this region. We've got strong instability in that uh you know upper level support as well across this region. So this is the look at about 6:00 p.m. Uh this would be about noon. So the event peaks late afternoon into the uh you know early evening hours across this region. Very typical kind of timing. That's maybe the one typical part of this severe weather event is the timing on this one. late afternoon into the evening across portions of really northern and northeastern Oregon southeast Washington and then northern portions of Idaho seems to be where this event wants to peak. Now we'll flip it over. We'll look at the precipitation forecast here. This is the European model, so not terribly high resolution, but you can see the area of low pressure here. Kind of the surface low being reflected uh and these showers and storms popping up as we head through kind of the late afternoon hours. So quiet as we get the day started. We start to get some instability feeding in there. Storms start to pop up. This will be about noon across the region. And then by 6 p.m. we've got widespread showers and storms. And again, a few of these could be strong, producing damaging winds, large hail, and a couple of tornadoes across the region as we head through uh the the later part of the day today. This low continues to spin across the region as we head through Friday and Saturday. But today is really kind of that best combination of some instability across the region with that upper level support from the cutoff low before the low starts to slip off to the east bringing some badly needed moisture and storm chances to parts of the high plains. So this is where I want to kind of take just a bit of a snapshot. We dove right into the Pacific Northwest. But as we kind of look at what's going on across the country, you do have that ridge of high pressure that Eric and Matt have been talking about in depth. uh you know setting up across the Canadian prairie down into the central US kind of blocking up the pattern such that these lows we do have a couple of them coming in but they're kind of deflected off to the north bringing in a lot of rain uh and storms that we really needed you know across parts of Alberta Saskatchewan down into the high plains Montana Wyoming and scattered storms from the Dakotas down into parts of Nebraska and Kansas as well but as we look at the 7-day precipitation forecast you know would really be loving to get more in the way of soaking rains pulled back here across parts of the high plains. As we just kind of look at what's going on right now with the hazards map, we've got some dense fog across parts of the Ohio Valley. Also have some dense fog here, kind of postfrontal behind uh you know, several stormy days here across parts of Texas.

[00:06:19]And then as you get into the high plains into the uh the mountainous areas here, uh we got high hot dry conditions here, heat advisories, and we got some red flag warnings in place as well. And then of course maybe looking for a you know severe or tornado watches and warnings across the Pacific Northwest as we head through the rest of the day today. Now we'll jump ahead back here to the European model. This is where I want to kind of just walk us through what we've got over the next 7 to 14 days. It's a pretty stagnant pattern, a pretty blocked up pattern as we head through the end of May into early June. But there are still some big changes here as we get to around June 10 to 15 which we get into Eric and Matt's specialty range when we do that. So, I'll let them kind of tee that back up and resume that discussion on Friday. Invite you to go back and watch Eric's video from yesterday if you did not do that already. So, I'm going to jump back over. We're going to move away from the precipitation forecast and I just want to look at heights. Uh, so we're going to look at 500 mibar height anomalies here. This will kind of flip it over to this trough and ridges look that we're very accustomed to. Here's the big ridge that's blown up across uh, you know, anchored from Canada down into the central US. This ridge is so strong that we've got these, you know, lows that are trying to come in from the Pacific and they are just running into that ridge and being deflected well off to the north. So, this is the snapshot here early Thursday morning. This is the cutoff low that's going to uh bring that severe weather on the northern side to parts of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho today. And then that risk for an isolated strong storm producing some large hail. You know, one to two inches in diameter across parts of the uh the high plains of Colorado this afternoon and evening. This trough does get pushed a little bit here. You know, these cutoff lows, they need something to kind of move them along, something to give them a nudge. Otherwise, they just kind of sit and spin over the same area. Uh and so this trough across the west does give it a little bit of a shove. That's what brings that scattered storm chance to parts of the high plains from Montana down into Kansas as we head through Friday and Saturday. Just a little bit of support from this cutoff low as it's kind of nudged across the central US.

[00:08:24]But with the presence of this big ridge, it's not allowed to fully eject and bring rains across the cornbt. Going to be dry here across much of the the Great Lakes into the central cornbt over the next 7 to 14 days as we kind of fight with this ridge parked overhead. well advertised and it is doing its job right now and keeping the rains away, letting folks get into the fields and kind of finish up field work. A lot of activity in the fields here across central Illinois as folks uh continue to finish getting the crop in the ground uh and kind of getting things ready to emerge as we head into the the bulk of the growing season. So, this cutoff low washes out. We're into the first couple days of June now. This is June 2nd. Got another big bowling ball here across the Pacific. we're just back into this omega look where you can almost draw the Greek letter omega as you kind of trace around the bottom of this trough up over the top of the ridge and then back around the the trough here over the uh the northeast and and the Atlantic Ocean.

[00:09:18]So, we kind of walk this forward just a little bit further getting into June 3rd into June 4th. Not much change in the pattern. We're still getting some influence from the subtropical jetream as these little weaker disturbances kind of sneak beneath the ridge and bring another round of rain and storms to parts of Texas and the Gulf Coast as we get into the first week of June. But all eyes are really going to be on, you know, can we eventually get this, you know, low train or this, you know, parade of troughs to start to eject across the western US, get some momentum and start bringing storm systems back, you know, ejecting across the Rockies into the central US, bringing storms back into the Midwest and the Great Lakes after what's going to be an extended period here, or at least uh relatively speaking, geographically, this kind of one, two, 3 week stretch of dryness. Thankfully, not coupled too much with excessive heat, but we are going to put some dryness on the ground here across portions of the Midwest, the central and eastern cornbt. And of course, we don't want to extend that through the entirety of the summer. So, we like a little bit of dryness and some warmth right now to get the uh uh get field work finished and put some heat on the crop as it starts to emerge, but we want to bring those rains back as we get into late June and July. And there's still plenty of reason to believe that does happen. Again, you can continue to follow along with Eric and Matt's longer range uh assessments here again yesterday and tomorrow. But as I just walk this forward, starting to see some evidence here. Now, the this is the European operational kind of just the deterministic run as we get to June 10th. You can see the model still trying to fight that ridge that, you know, still says no, not letting these troughs in. We're going to kind of blow the ridge back up here in the first and second week of June and continue to deflect uh you know these troughs up over the top of it. You know, bringing rain to the Canadian prairies, sometimes uh maybe more severe weather to the Pacific Northwest, but storms to the high plains. But this really shuts the the central plains into the Midwest down. But we've got some changes here on the horizon. Again, you know, we're talking a lot about the impact of ENSO, this rapidly strengthening uh El Nino across the Pacific, maybe. And there's a lot of analog support for a later in the month, later in June into July flip to a much more active pattern, maybe initially with some troughing across the western US, but then getting us into a pretty favorable pattern with northwest flow that runs from the plains into the central uh cornbt. Now, the European AI has a bit of a different look as we get out to this part of the forecast near the end of the run, uh, kind of June 5th through June 11th. And the AI has shown some pretty good skill here as far as picking out kind of the bigger pattern overall and where things are going as the models kind of struggle during this seasonal transition from a spring-like pattern into what's going to be our summer pattern typically this time of year as we head through the month of June. Now, I was looking at the latest data from the European AI uh forecast model, and it is really kind of leaning into the idea that in midJune, we're going to finally start to mix this pattern up. And I'll show you here. This is where we get into kind of the transition the first few days of June still very much have that uh you know, it's a little more washed out, but omega look with that trough ridge over North America and then trough as you get over toward the Atlantic. The big question again is when do we get some of these Pacific troughs to get some momentum and eject or do they do so eventually?

[00:12:38]Again, a lot of analog and research kind of says this should happen in mid June.

[00:12:43]We should get storminess to return to the central US. And the AI is maybe trying to pick up on that as we get into the second week of June. So this would be around June 6th, June 7th, and then let's walk it a little bit further. It's this one here kind of getting into June 9th and June 10th. We've got our first little trough trying to make its way in.

[00:13:00]Uh this would finally eject just a bit bringing some rain into parts of uh uh the uh the central US. You know, if we kind of are able to flip over and look at winds associated with this 300 mibar winds. Again, this is much better in the way of, you know, upper level support and some troughing trying to make its way in. And then, you know, on top of that, we're starting to see some signs of this Pacific jet extension developing here, which would give some momentum to again kind of break down the ridge and shove some lows from the western US into the central US and start getting more in the way of a routinely stormy pattern.

[00:13:36]So, what I'm going to do then is just flip it back over to the European deterministic run. We're going to walk through the precipitation forecast over the next 7 to 10 days uh and then talk about something kind of fun and then I'm going to leave it to Eric to kind of resume things here on Friday morning.

[00:13:50]So, here's the precipitation forecast over the next 10 days or so. Again, that chance for some severe storms across the Pacific Northwest this afternoon into the late evening. We've also got this departing trough with kind of a frontal boundary that runs right back through the southeast and you can follow it up the high plains. So you got this ridge of high pressure. You've got kind of northerly flow coming around that ridge and then southerntherly flow coming up still kind of feeding moisture back toward the high plains kind of interacting with this front. Now what we're lacking is upper level support.

[00:14:23]You know we got this frontal boundary kind of stalled across the region. But if I pull up, you know, jetream winds, it's not as if we have a trough and a bunch of upper level support over the top of that boundary to kick off big showers and storms. So, you got some surface convergence, but not a lot in the way of upper level jetream support to organize those storms as you might typically have uh this time of year. So, if I just flip it back, you can probably see it as we look at maybe due points or you can kind of see the the richer, more humid air off to the south of that boundary. It's it's pretty subtle, but it is enough to kind of kick off scattered showers and storms over the next couple of days. And we jump back over to the precipitation forecast here.

[00:15:03]Again, there is that frontal boundary.

[00:15:04]This is Friday morning. Uh we'll walk it through Saturday. You're seeing this front still kind of there, but washing out just a bit. And now we do have that cutoff low that's starting to emerge just a bit and not necessarily a lot in the way of upper level support. But you can kind of see, you know, we lose the bowling ball over the western US and we just kind of give it a little bit of a shove from the west. does not get picked back up by the polar jet or anything like that, but just a little bit of a shove such that now we've got this stalled frontal boundary across the region. And now we do have just a little bit of support here over the weekend uh for more in the way of scattered storms.

[00:15:42]Maybe a couple of strong to severe storms here uh especially Friday and Saturday across portions of Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska. Not a soaking rain, but a chance a couple of strong storms could produce unfortunately some hail, some strong winds across the region. can't rule out maybe an isolated tornado. Now, this area of high pressure continues to uh you know do its job and this low is going to eventually not eject east but lift and kind of weaken across the prairie. So, you can watch the rain just kind of start to go away as this trough lifts north and washes out as we get into early next week. This is Monday and Tuesday. This would bring some badly needed moisture back into parts of the high plains of uh Alberta, southwest Saskatchewan, and Montana. So, this is badly needed moisture across those regions. Uh, but it, you know, avoids, uh, the Great Lakes, parts of the central cornbt here, Minnesota, Wisconsin, down to Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana. Going to be dealing with a bit of a dry stretch here as we head into the beginning of June. Now, as we get into kind of June 4th, this is where the pattern really starts to wash out. I'm not going to get really detailed uh, beyond this. we kind of wait for the next trough to try to move in from uh the west. But at this point, you've got very weak, very disorganized jetream flow. When I I see this, I don't even have to look at the jetream map yet to understand what's going on. You've seen just kind of a low over here, a low over there, a very weak area of low pressure across uh Manitoba, and then just nothing going on. You've got kind of splotchy green areas of showers and storms, but these these isobars, uh, these lines here are very disorganized and very spaced out, which leads me to believe that there's very little going on, you know, across c the central US, across the lower 48 as far as organized areas of low pressure, which much must much must mean the jetream is quite weak and disorganized as well. So, I will flip over now, test that theory, and here you go. 300 mibar winds, fast flow over here, fast flow over there.

[00:17:41]Absolutely nothing across the central United States to to drive interesting weather. I mean, if you want interesting weather, storm systems, uh, and disturbances, rain, thunderstorms, uh, anything other than sunny, quiet weather, you want that jetream nearby.

[00:17:57]And we just do not have it, uh, with this current pattern. It is flanking us west and east and off to the north right now across the cornbell with this pattern in late May into June. It's not going to be a forever pattern, but that is what we've got right now. Just very little to steer uh or organize the weather across the central US. Now, that will change again as we continue to walk this pattern into the month of June, but when is it going to change exactly and what is going to be the catalyst here? I think it's going to be in that June 10 to 15 range. I mentioned I do think the European AI forecast uh you know model is starting to pick up on this evolution. I'll just show you one more time. You know, starting off present day big bowling ball here beneath the ridge.

[00:18:40]We'll walk this into the first few days of June and we just get to this place where we've got very little to no flow across the lower 48. It's not until we probably get somewhere like this where we've got a bit of an extension, a little bit of a trough developing, maybe something to push it and get a a more steady state flowing pattern across the lower 48 into the Abel.

[00:19:04]Probably not going to happen until the second week of June uh at least. So, let's finish. Let's just talk about the impact to uh temperatures after I show you. Well, I'll just give you verbatim the next 7 to 10 days of uh precipitation uh accumulation across the region. I'll go ahead and flip over here just so you can kind of see what we've got. And I'm not going to not going to walk it all the way out to there when we get that pattern change. The next 10 days or so, I think really illustrates what's going on. And that is that chance for some soaking rain from Alberta down to Montana, parts of southwest Saskatchewan. Really need this. And we got the chance for 2 to 4 inches of rain. chance for another round of some central plains rain uh here from this system that slowly ejects, you know, and kind of brings some support to that stalled boundary. Again, you can just kind of follow that stalled front. Uh we got the opportunity here for an inch or more of rain across parts of Kansas uh and Oklahoma. Not likely to be a widespread drought busting rain and of course would love to get some of this further to the west and just does not like look like we're going to do it in a widespread soaking fashion uh in in the near term. So, this takes us all the way out to uh June 3rd and June 4th. We've covered about a week now. And you can kind of make out the pattern. There it is. Heavier rain in the high plains, Alberta down to Montana. Chance for some storms along that stalled frontal boundary from the southeast into parts of the central plains. A chance for some deeper Gulf moisture at times to make its way up toward the Gulf Coast into parts of Florida, bringing additional rain to the uh drought area down here.

[00:20:32]But uh from Minnesota, Iowa into Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, you know, Michigan into the mid-Atlantic, parts of the East Coast, this is a dry pattern over the next 7 to 10 days, uh if not into maybe the second week of June. So, now we will finish with uh temperatures.

[00:20:49]I'm going to flip on over to the ensemble look here. I'll show you what we got for precipitation from the European Ensemble as well. Very similar look. we start to kind of fill in this Great Lakes eastern cornbt zone here as we get into maybe the second week of June. Uh potentially getting a bit of a pattern change here. Uh but for now, just kind of locked in right along that stalled front where we got some deep Gulf moisture and then where we've got that cutoff flow or series of cutoff flows just kind of lifting across this region. These are your rainy stormy corridors over the next 7 to 10 days.

[00:21:23]Finishing up with temperatures here.

[00:21:24]We'll look at this in kind of a uh a rolling uh you know daily anomaly where we got the ridge blowing up across the Canadian prairies. We're starting to get some early summer heat. We're talking about temperatures you know getting to 30° C or maybe a couple degrees above over the next couple of days across portions of the prairies. Definitely some early summer heat across that region. It'll start to uh fall back or or kind of peel back as that cutoff low washes out and lifts up into the region.

[00:21:50]And again, it'll be a very stormy end to the weekend and start to next week across parts of uh Alberta, Montana, and southwest Saskatchewan. And with that, we'll bring in some cooler temperatures.

[00:22:00]The ridge does start to reinforce itself though across the West. We'll bring some heat back into the northern plains and the Great Lakes. This is not record-breaking heat. This is just a little warmer than average. Probably, you know, as we're talking about Illinois, temperatures in the 80s as you get back over toward the high plains, probably upper 80s to around 90°. uh and then maybe some 80s getting up into Minnesota and Wisconsin. So, a dry pattern here, but not necessarily a scorching pattern and that is probably going to be a blessing here as we bring in some warmth, some solar radiation to these crops as they start to emerge across the central and eastern cornbt and allow some folks who are still trying to finish up that field work to do so. So, that's kind of a a quick look at what we've got going on. I wanted to finish with just something kind of fun.

[00:22:44]Uh I've been sitting out at the office here. We work at a farm uh the innovation farm location just south of uh Champagne Illinois located kind of right about here uh between Tulono and Pho. And we've got a great view out the window of the open fields that have been you know planted in most cases still have a lot of loose soil on top that's easy to blow around. We get things like this these little dust devils developing across the farm fields. These are two really dramatic examples here. But these dust levels love to form on hot sunny days with lower relative humidity and kind of some gentle winds. Just some some light winds, maybe 5 to 10 miles an hour. You get these little wind gusts and they'll kick up a little bit of an eddy. And when you've got these steep laps rates, which is to say that it's very hot near the ground, relatively speaking, you know, give today as an example. It's right now in the mid50s outside. It was a cool overnight. Uh so the ground is very cool, but the sun is going to come up and we're rapidly going to warm up near the ground. we had a, you know, high temperature in the the mid 80s. We'll likely head to the 80s by the time we get to around the lunch hour. So, what you do is you heat up the ground much more quickly than you do the air, say several hundred feet above the ground, and and so you get the air cooling very rapidly with height, steep lapse rates, and that air wants to rise quickly when you get that kind of setup.

[00:24:00]So, when you get these little eddies or a little swirl developing on a gust of wind, you can stretch that with these really steep lapse rates and get a dust devil to form. And I kind of put together this fun little index that looks at all the ingredients that make favorable conditions for dust levels and plotted it over the next 12 hours here for Champagne, Illinois. And it's nearly maxed out across the area as we get to around, you know, 11:00 a.m. uh to 4 5:00 p.m. Uh so if you're across, you know, parts of central Illinois, surrounding portions of the Cornbell, keep an eye on those fields here today.

[00:24:32]May be looking at, you know, great conditions for some of these really dramatic dust levels. I'll certainly be trying to uh verify this forecast with the on foot intercept of uh one of these dust levels. So, I appreciate you uh letting me talk to you here for just a little bit. Kind of spending a lot of time talking about that Pacific Northwest severe weather risk. But that is kind of the most interesting thing that we've got over the next 5 to 10 days as we watch these cutoff lows just continue to uh refuse to eject east of the Rockies and kind of watch for maybe June 10th and beyond for a shakeup in the pattern and a resumption to a more stormy outlook across the central US, parts of the Midwest. Hope I did not kind of lock Eric into a theme there, but he will resume uh with the normal cadence on Friday. And I believe that Matt will be chopping at the bit, even with a a newborn in the house to get back and talk to you guys next week.

[00:25:20]Appreciate the conversation. Have a wonderful Thursday. We'll talk to you again on Friday morning.