It's About to Get Toasty
We'd like to welcome back Spring, summer, or fall, or something in between...
If you’ve been following us on our Facebook page, you’ve no doubt already seen how warm it will likely be on Christmas for the Southern/Central Plains. But this warm-up is looking increasingly certain.
1. Pack Shorts For Your Christmas Trips
Much of the country will be under the influence of a powerful upper-level ridge for this time of year, bringing top-tier warmth to much of the Southern/Central Plains.
No Snow: I think it seems obvious, but much of the country won’t need to be dreaming of a white Christmas. The Great Lakes into the Northeast seems the best bet, alongside higher terrain in the West.
Records falling? The record high temperature in Oklahoma City for Christmas is 73°F. The NBM keeps temps just below the record criteria, but models like the Euro have a record-setting Christmas in store for heat.
Severe weather? At some point, there will be a reckoning of sorts for this heat, as a cold front will inevitably slam southwards into a warm/moist, and unstable airmass. But exact timing or details are rather scant at this moment. Some models, I’m not seeing any real signs; this is more of a pattern recognition thing than anything.
2. A Day Full of Monster Supercells
Our newest video is out!
Our chase day on May 25, 2025, started with a clear target in mind across NW Texas, along with just about every other storm chaser on planet earth. We planned to drop westward towards more supercells as the main area lined out, with a potential secondary terrific storm towards sunset.
It all worked out according to plan, and this video ignores the random tornado in New Mexico on this day as if it never existed.
3. An Average Year of Tornadoes
After all of that, we are going to end up just within the average corridor for tornadoes this year, it looks like. While we were on a record-setting pace during the Spring, the season all but flatlined after late June, with one of the slowest 6-month periods of tornado activity in the country ongoing.
Despite ending where we thought (about average), we didn’t get there how we might’ve expected. Our official forecast for the year called for a year rotating around average, which is what we got, but I don’t think it entered any of our minds that we’d have a record-setting Spring and equally record-setting quiet Summer, Fall, and Winter.
Big Surprise? While our cold and hot zones did pretty well, I think, the fringes of the cold zone were really quite active. North Dakota had a record year. The Panhandles also had a really busy year, and it was something I wasn’t fully expecting. That area around Lubbock, particularly, was red hot.
Big Miss? Despite the hot/cold zones being pretty solid, the big miss I think I had this year was expecting fewer overall chase day opportunities. However, the season was definitely in fits and spurts as expected. It was a very busy Spring in terms of tornado counts and days, just things went so silent after late June that it’s hard to reconcile both of those truths at the same time. I think that was a very slight miss, but again not in the way I expected.
And my expectations for 2026? There are a lot of trends I’m watching for 2026, and I’m honestly not ready to lean into any specific forecast. I am offering sneak previews of my thought process throughout the winter to our YouTube channel members, though, and you can check that out at this link.
