Severe Storms Bringing Large Hail, Damaging Wind Threat To The Northern Plains

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:01]Well, believe it or not, everything can be connected. It has been a quiet month across the plains in in terms of some severe weather activity, but we have it back on the board. Severe chances picking up across the central plains all weekend long. We have the potential for large hail, damaging winds, and perhaps a tornado. So, getting you a look at the forecast, this is what I mean by everything is connected. So, you have that deep tropical-like moisture down across the south. We have a big ridge of high pressure that's been building across the country. This is our omega block. Now, it's starting to shift a touch in its orientation. Still very much present, but you can see some of this moisture getting drawn up into the plains, really up over the border, and banking into, well, a spot like Montana.

[00:00:49]And with that moisture getting pulled all the way north, we are going to see a very wet weekend for Great Falls, Butte, Missoula, even Miles City, Glasgow. This is for areas, too, which were baking in summer heat this week. We had heat advisories on the board for eastern Montana. Now, we replace that with the showers and thunderstorms. So, watching this focus through the remainder of the day, rain barely quits here for the I-15 and the I-90 interchange here across parts of the mountainous region of Montana. We work into the plains, and that's where we are going to see those thunderstorms bubble up for the evening, quiet, and then come right back as we go towards the back half of the day again on Sunday. So, that's where we stay active across the northern part of the plains. Risk of flooding, certainly, for Montana with that persistent rain. But, when we look at the overall pattern with this omega block, in the last couple of days, we've been shielded from some of the worst of the intensity of severe storms. Now, the PNW, a rare outline there with some damaging wind gusts and big hail, but the plains is what you think of in the month of May. And while it's been generally lackluster in terms of getting that big coverage, which is really a good thing if we're being honest, right? We don't want to see that happen, but we are going to monitor perhaps that slight change in our forecast as our omega starts to shift a touch and that trough edges its way through the Rockies. We are going to see a little more energy kick out into the plains. We have that boundary and advancing dry line which will spark the possibility of those severe thunderstorms later in the day and closer to that area of spin, that's where we are going to see that heightened risk just upgraded here of that tornado potential, that extra shear in the environment. So Kansas, Nebraska, heads up here North Platte down to Wichita and then let's get you through the timing. We've got the energy building through the afternoon and then into the evening along that dry line is where those storms develop. So monitoring that probably discrete initially growing into that line of storms that charges up to the northeast as we go through tonight.