A Multi Day Severe Weather Outbreak Is Likely

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]We have an extremely active stretch of severe weather chances out ahead of us and we're going to break it all down for you. It all starts with today. We'll go over that first and make our way throughout the rest of the weekend, then get into early to midway portions of next week. I really think Sunday onward, we run the risk of an outbreak of severe storms, but I I think the next couple of days, including uh today, is nothing to play with either. We run the risk of significant severe weather out ahead of us also. So, we'll break it all down for you, get as detailed as possible. I will nerd out with you guys a little bit along the way. Talk about those overlapping uh severe weather ingredients and all that. My name is Mitch. Good Friday morning. Hope you guys are doing well. Your boy Mitch is not feeling that well this morning. So, if there's any hiccups in this video, any pauses, clearing of throat, sneezing, whatever it may be. I do apologize. You know, you just saw it there. I had to swallow. So, uh this is going to be a tough one to make our way through. Uh but it's very active. We got to continue to pump out the content. So, subscribe if you haven't. Like the video if you like it. Those likes go a long way, especially with how slow it is. You can tell people are just not really tuning in uh to Weather YouTube right now. And and I think it's because a lot of the severe weather since maybe in some lower populated areas. Not sure what it is, but you can you can see that things have really tanked as far as views over there really really this entire work week. It's it's pretty wild.

[00:01:17]There was like a significant drop off this past weekend. So, we're going to continue to pump out the information though. But more importantly, if you guys got anything that I can pray about or pray over, please put in the comments below. Sorry for the lengthy intro there. Let's get rocking and rolling this morning. Let's go over today's severe weather threat. First, we now have an enhanced risk, which includes a good chunk of Iowa. Really just inside the state lines of Iowa. We got a slight risk around that, but that enhanced risk um is a level three out of five. That's in the orange. Slight risk is in the yellow. Level two out of five. This goes around the enhanced risk and kind of uh drops down here into the panhandle of Oklahoma and Texas. And then we got the marginal risk around that and that gets all the way from the up Michigan drops down through the Midwest through the plains all the way to pretty much Fort Stockton uh Texas. Now, what's driving today's severe weather threat? The tornado threat right now, as of around 6:30 a.m. Eastern time, um we just have a 2% risk of a tornado. It's the damaging wind threat that is uh really driving the enhanced risk upgrade for today. So, if you live in that red area, which is pretty much the the heart of Iowa, that is a 30% chance of damaging winds within 25 miles in the given location. The yellow, which goes all the way down here into Texas and Oklahoma, you know, good chunk of here of central Kansas, sections of Nebraska, northern Missouri, 15% risk of damaging winds. in that black outlined area, uh, black dash is going in between. That means that we run a risk of hurricane force wind gusts. So that's 75 mile per hour plus wind. So a big deal with that today. And then we take a look at the hail threat.

[00:02:58]There is a chance of significant sized hail also. So we got a 15% risk in the yellow area. Here comes the voice kind of crackling. So like I said, there's going to be some hiccups in this video.

[00:03:08]I almost thought about not even doing it, but it's very active coming up. So I thought, hey, we need to jump on here and and muscle through this. But yellow area, 15% risk of hail exceeding 1 inch in diameter or larger. Black outlined area, black dashes going in between.

[00:03:23]That means we run the risk of hell exceeding two, maybe two and a half, three inch in diameter or larger. So be aware of significant sized hail for today. So let's break down what the radar could look like today. And we're going to start off in the northern mode, drop our way down further south after this. So, if you've noticed, we made the little time stamp thing up here larger for you. I can't make it any larger than that. This is as big as it's going to get, and I think it looks great. This is Weatherfront. Fantastic site. They're going to be dropping the desktop version of this, making it available on Android here in the coming uh weeks and month or so. So, very excited to be able to be a tester for them, if you will, for this site. But it's Weatherfront. You can see their logo here. But we made this in central time now. So, that's awesome, right? All right. Let's move forward. We get into 6 7 8:00, not a whole lot going on. You see some big thunderstorms bubbling up right off the dot here around southeastern areas of Minnesota.

[00:04:16]And then you see these storms in central areas of Wisconsin, southwestern areas of the state. We even got some storms trying to bubble up here in the UP of Michigan, especially the southern areas.

[00:04:25]We got a big area of storms cruising through the southern areas of uh Wisconsin. This is like midnight tonight, guys. This is 1:00 a.m. 2 a.m.

[00:04:33]3:00 a.m. and then they blast over Lake Michigan and then greet you guys in lower Michigan and the early morning hours tomorrow morning. So that's the northern mode of this and uh man, what happened here? We skipped the central mode, the most important area. Here we go. Uh this is Iowa and surrounding area starting around 4 4 PM this afternoon.

[00:04:52]Not a whole lot going on. getting the seven, eight, big storms around Lincoln, Omaha, starting to get, you know, close to De Moine, but you even got some storms firing up here near Mason City.

[00:05:02]All these, if there's going to be a tornado, um, with some of these storms today, it's going to happen kind of early to mid evening time frame around dinner time when these things are initially somewhat discreet, if they are going to be at all. And then everything sort of begins to kind of group together. This is when this can turn into somewhat of a messcale convective system sort of riding on top of this kind of bridge that's building across this region and really positioning itself somewhat east at the same time.

[00:05:28]So we got big storms across Iowa. We begin to make it 11:00 p.m. midnight tonight. You know, we've already mentioned southern Wisconsin big storms rumbling through and then we begin to move into the early morning hours is 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5, 6, 7. So really watch of these storms, you know, later this evening. This is around 6 7 8:00 and you can see those big storms and you see the purple in these storms indicating maybe some hail, very large hail with these storms and just stronger to severe storms. So we take a look here the rest of Kansas and Oklahoma and then the panhandle of Texas and we make our way through. There's not a whole lot to show you here. does show some development of some storms here in central areas of Kansas, but you're not seeing any way of those, you know, reds and pinks and things like that with this, but you continue to move forward.

[00:06:17]A lot of scattered heavy rains and embedded thunderstorms in Missouri.

[00:06:22]Outside of that, there's not really a whole lot popping up. And this is getting all the way into tomorrow morning. So, we kind of make our way into the late evening hours. Again, there does show some convection down here in Texas. So, we back this up a little bit. Some storms begin to form. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they kind of introduce a very small slight risk down here in Texas. Um, because it looks like there's better confidence level on just better flow down here in Texas to get these storms going 6 7 8 9:00 10 11. So, just be aware of some of these storms down here in central areas of Texas. So, uh, man, these uh, little graphics are everywhere. All right, I think I think we're right now. So, yeah, we just have some of the graphics mixed up. So, this is tomorrow's severe weather threat. We have a slight risk right now centered over northeast Colorado through the heart of Nebraska, very small portion of southeast um South Dakota, northern Kansas, and then squeezes its way into Iowa. Then we got sort of a a weird um marginal risk that goes from the Ohio Valley, areas of the Midwest, goes back up, and then kind of drops back down. And honestly, when you look at the outlook, kind of the outlining of it, it makes sense. It's kind of boowing up, right? And this is because it's sort of of of some shortwave some pieces of energy in the atmosphere just kind of riding this ridge kind of bubbling up and positioning itself east. And this is kind of riding on top. Uh so there's really two big areas to watch for for tomorrow's severe weather threat. One over here that might get a slight risk upgrade and then one right here that might get an enhanced risk upgrade. But right now what's driving it? 2% risk of a tornado in this area in the green. The wind threat. Got to watch out. We might get a wind upgrade here which would drive it to that enhanced risk. So yellow area 15% risk of damaging winds.

[00:08:07]Black outlined area, black dashes going in between. That's where we could have significant severe winds. Winds that could exceed 75 mph or higher. And the hell threat yellow area 15% risk of hail exceeding 1 in in diameter or larger.

[00:08:22]black outlined area, which by the way, if storms can get going down here, um we run the risk of significant size hail hell that could exceed two maybe three inch in diameter or larger. So, we take a look at the kind of the marginal risk area and we're going to start off around 5:00 a.m. Central time tomorrow. We got a lot of convection. We got some storms kind of surging through southern areas of um lower Michigan and northern Indiana. We got a complex of energy back here in Missouri. And we just got to watch for, you know, these storms to fire up some fire fire along some leftover boundaries, things like that.

[00:08:55]So, it's around, I mean, 9:00 tomorrow morning. We got big storms trying to uh get going here in southern areas of Illinois, Indiana, getting into Kentucky, make this a little bit larger again. And as we continue to move forward, we'll just watch for some big storms even down into Kentucky where the marginal risk doesn't really extend all the way down into even some areas of heavy rain in West Virginia. and got some just pockets of heavy rain just across the Ohio Valley. And then we'll watch later on. Is there going to be additional convection that forms it might in Ohio and we got some storms up here in Iowa, northern Illinois that will be on potentially ongoing later uh tomorrow evening. But it honestly looks like it's like a late morning, early afternoon type deal across areas of the Ohio Valley and stuff. So now this is the area where things could really pop off tomorrow.

[00:09:42]This is around 400 p.m. Central time tomorrow and we make our way into about seven big storms trying to fire in Iowa again and even some storms in southern and southern areas of Iowa, northern areas of Missouri. And then you can see these big storms ongoing and firing off.

[00:09:58]I really think they'll start in like eastern Colorado, then make their way across the central plains of Nebraska and Kansas. And then we begin to move into tomorrow evening. Big storms going right over the heart of Nebraska, northern areas of Kansas, clustering of storms right here in Iowa. And these could produce all hazards. You know, damaging winds, large hail being the biggest threat obviously, but tornadoes cannot be ruled out. And this is just a big chunk of storms that'll be surging in through the overnight hours across the central plains and the Midwest. I mean, it's 1:00 in the morning, Sunday morning. big storms moving through um areas of South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and this is as far out as we can go on the HER model, but this continues to eject into Minnesota and Wisconsin and the Dakotas in time. So, all right, we make our way into Sunday's outlook.

[00:10:46]Confidence is already there for an enhanced risk. This is when we can run the risk of outbreak type stuff. So, the orange area, enhanced risk, level three out of five. The yellow is a slight risk, level two out of five. The dark green is a marginal risk, a level one out of five. And um right now we just know there is a 30% risk of severe weather within 25 miles in the given location. In this red area, yellow area is a 15% risk of that. And then this black outlined area, black dash is going in between. This means we run the risk of significant severe weather. This could be strong tornadoes. This could be damaging a hurricane force winds. Uh this could be very large hail exceeding 2 in in diameter or larger. So it's going to be a big day and you know you move into and what we're going to do from Sunday onward, we're just going to show you the outlooks then kind of move through Sunday onward as a whole in model data. So this is Monday severe weather outlook even larger enhanced risk. The outlooks begin to look different once we get from day four onward. So that kind of doled out orange color you see that is a massive enhanced risk a level three out of five. And then the yellow area is a massive slight risk level two out of five. And what we know is that in the orange area that's a 30% risk of severe weather. The yellow area is a 15% risk of severe weather. And then we move into Tuesday. There's a risk of severe weather. And this outlook has not changed from yesterday much. But if you live in the yellow area, this is a 15% risk of severe weather within 25 mi in the given location. We're probably going to run the risk of severe weather Wednesday onward, too. But we're not going to focus too much on that. And we're just taking a look at model data here. This is just the Euro sort of starting off where we left off with Saturday night and a Sunday morning.

[00:12:35]This is Sunday morning around, you know, just just call it early Sunday morning, right? We got these pieces of energy popping off a trough, which we'll discuss here in a second in the form of short waves, weaker to eventually stronger lo uh low pressures depending on how they they eject. So, we're already waking up to a lot of just heavy rain and storm activity across areas of the upper upper portions of the country.

[00:12:56]And as we begin to move into 1 pm, you know, just the mid-afternoon time frame and then getting into the late afternoon evening, you see thunderstorms beginning to erupt across the upper Midwest up here with a a surface low kind of ejecting off this trough uh from the south to the north. And then we get into the evening hours and we'll probably get some storms all the way up into the up and Michigan. Leftover energy probably here in Iowa. And you see all this energy and you even got snow in the Rockies. We'll get a big snowstorm out of this midmay snowstorm. Pretty wild.

[00:13:26]But you can already see another low about to pop off here here in Colorado.

[00:13:29]This might not be exactly where it is around 1:00 a.m. Monday, but could be in the general region. And anytime when you see a low right here and a lot of energy right here, you know, we're about to get some sort of ejection of energy and we start to get into Monday morning and we could already have ongoing strong to severe thunderstorms in the Midwest. But this is a lot of energy on the colder side. And we could actually get some snow, mid-may snow across areas of the northern high plains here of Nebraska, the Dakotas. But, you know, just to kind of position this a little bit further down. This is a lot of thunderstorm activity ahead of this surface slow ejecting off this trough. And all this action could very well be severe. And as we get into Monday, remember this is the outlook for uh this is the outlook for Monday. So, we're going to have a huge area of the middle of the country runs the risk of severe weather. So, and then we get into, you know, mid-afternoon, late afternoon. I mean, you're seeing a lot of splashes of orange and red yellows from the north to the south. I mean, from Texas all the way up to the upper portions of the country. So, I mean, there's going to be just a lot of energy in the atmosphere to get this uh ingredients, I should say. And then we get into Tuesday and I mean we get into Tuesday morning and we get into Tuesday afternoon. I mean, a lot of this stuff begins to position itself further east.

[00:14:47]So, a lot of thunderstorm activity from I mean, the Mississippi Delta, areas of the western and mid Deep South and the western mid to deep south. Yeah, I said that right. All the way up into the Midwest, Ohio Valley, Great Lakes region, and then heck, I mean, even as we're getting into Wednesday onward, I really think a lot of the synergy begins to make its way to the south. And I think this bount this cold front that will be associated with this trough is not going to be able to clear the entire south. So, um I think we're going to introduce better rain chances probably late next week onward for the south. And we'll talk more about that in the videos to come. But um talking about this setup, we're making pretty good time this morning. That's good. Um talking about this setup, this is the um the blue area is a trough. The yellow orange area that you see on your screen, which is this, this is ridging. So trough ridging. So we stop at here, which is around Sunday morning. I can draw on this a little bit. What you see here is a ridge kind of spiking across the eastern half of the lower 48. And there's a trough dropping down across the western half. Typically that brings together severe weather for the middle of the country. Now, of course, if this ridge is positioned a little bit further this way, this trough is positioned a little bit further that way, you might get more severe weather right in here.

[00:16:03]And eventually, that's what's going to happen. So, it's all about the positioning of the dip in the jet and the building of the ridge. So, as we move forward here in time, you're going to notice this blob of blue, which is a trough, is going to drop down. You see the stronger area of troughing? I want you I want you to look how it goes from this to sort of this. It tilts. It kind of goes like that. All right. I'm going to put this in motion.

[00:16:30]See how it does that right there? Let's back it up. See how it kind of swings a little bit over uh Utah and surrounding states? That's what you call a trough going from positive to negative tilt.

[00:16:41]Positive, neutral to negative. When that happens, you get the development of a very strong low pressure. And that's what's going to happen as we get into Sunday, Monday, and maybe even even into Tuesday. So, we take a look at this.

[00:16:51]This is your classic look. And this is Monday. So, we got flow basically coming down here, dropping the base of this trough, and then ejecting across the middle of the country on top of this ridge. And at the same time, you got flow going around uh the the ridge position itself. So we got moisture kind of kind of making its way across the middle of the country from the south to almost southeast. And then we got moisture coming and getting yanked up.

[00:17:18]So basically this moisture that's sitting in the Gulf. This the flow around this trough helps to kind of transport this moisture further to the north. The moisture itself already sort of hanging out down here. I mean we're getting into midmay. There's a lot of moisture down here already already. So, the flow around this trough sort of helps yank that moisture further north along with the ridge placement. So, kind of a tandem flow, if you will. And as you move forward, you get deeper into next week. You can see the trough doesn't necessarily swing into the eastern US, it sort of just gets on top and creates a bit of a zonal flow type look as we get into next week. And the ridge doesn't really get broke down. But what you notice down here, some blue.

[00:17:59]This indicates an active subtropical jet. So, I think we're going to get a lot of moisture that still continues to swing across the southern tier of the country. But, uh, talking about the upper wind pattern in response to that trough dropping out west, you can see what happens. You see how this thing's already, as we're getting into about Saturday morning, tomorrow morning, you can see how the flow is already beginning to dip across the west. But as we progress this forward and we get into Sunday and then we get into Monday, you're going to see, let's back it up a little bit. See how this little area, this little dip right here in these lines kind of goes from kind of dipping and facing to the southwest. All of a sudden, it's it's kind of facing more so to the east.

[00:18:42]That's that tilt that we talk about. So we get into Monday and even before this, you know, we got stout southwesterly flow. But Monday afternoon, which I think could be a big day of severe weather. Um, we have flow coming in like this and then screaming north like this and then on top of the ridge. And you can see there's no flow underneath the immediate ridge. So what's that going to do? Well, we get hot, stagnant air in the southeast and things are going to dry out even more than what they already are. Uh but you can see the upper wind pattern is going right over the middle of the country and uh this helps uh to transport moisture further north. So we start off Saturday and uh tomorrow evening. You can see already there's kind of mid-level short waves that are already transporting transporting moisture already into the Ohio Valley Midwest around kind of the ridge which is right into here. But uh as we begin to move into Sunday, you're going to see these higher due points, due points in the 60s. Thermodynamics needed for severe weather get pushed further north.

[00:19:41]And uh then we get into Monday and uh Monday afternoon and we get deep moisture all the way up to Chicago, Green Bay, I mean Detroit. I mean once you get into these purple colors, these are due points in the 70s. So a lot of moisture, massive moist sector. And then as we get into Tuesday, that sector of moist air begins to crash. um when we get back to dry, cooler air across the upper portions of the country. But uh this cold front does not I don't think it's I don't think it's going to clear the deep south states. So, we'll see what happens there. But that's all I got, guys. I know it's not quite as crazy details as the last few videos, but um I don't have a daily forecast. I got to get going. Uh today is the last day I go see my buddy here. He's a fifth grader. I volunteer every Friday, and today is the last day I get to go see him. So, um, it's a little bit of an emotional next several days for me. It hits me more than it does my wife. U, my my oldest girl is in fifth grade and she's about to graduate fifth grade, moving to sixth grade. So, it's just tough seeing them grow up. Sometimes I struggle seeing the seeing the good in and all, you know, which is great.

[00:20:48]They're growing up and they're great girls, both of them. But, you know, I'm I'm I'm one of those I would say I'm one of those somewhat uncommon parents that can live in the moment enough to know that, you know, I'm going to miss this.

[00:21:00]Like in those moments where you're just like, you know, you you kind of look at a moment and you freeze in your head, you know, I'm going to remember this. I'm conscious enough in real time to do stuff like that. And I feel like there's a lot of parents that maybe they're not.

[00:21:14]It's not a knock on parents. you know, you you you you get a lot of parents that'll say, "Man, I wish I could go back and appreciate that more or um I'm lucky enough to where I do, but at the same time, sometimes I think about it too much where it's like, man, I just don't want them to grow up, you know, and it's been a little bit low-key emotional for me lately, for sure, but just watching the kids get older and older and um my youngest is in third grade. she'll be going to fourth. But uh you know, part of you just wants wants them to stay in elementary school forever, you know. So anyways, that's all I got, guys. Um just asking for prayers. I feel better. And um I hope you guys are doing well also. And appreciate everybody that continues to tune in these slower times. It is slower than than anything right now. I just it's just bogged out right now, which is crazy because we're about to enter a very active stretch of weather. I don't know. Maybe maybe people are just sick of hearing about it. And I I'll be honest, I'm sick of talking about it. Uh so I'm I'm looking forward to my vacation uh here in the next week or so.

[00:22:18]Um and I'll talk more on that if you guys don't remember the live that I did a few weeks back where I talked about I'm going vacation from the 24th to the 29th of May. So I'll probably do another live sometime next week and talking on that. But enough of all that. God bless all y'all. Have a wonderful day and we'll talk again soon.