The 2026 Season is Dead…Long Live the 2026 Season!
It’s been a trip the last couple of weeks…
Sorry for the sparse writing as we’ve had a documentary crew following me around for a couple of weeks and I made the tough decision to take a couple of weeks away from the ol’ newsletter to focus on being the best on-camera personality I could be.
I’m not sure why they’re all burning their cameras right now, I thought I was excellent.
Anywho, let’s talk weather.
1)The Season is DEAD
That’s right, pick any ensemble you want and the season is truly well done, burnt-toast, dead. It’s over. Pack it up. A giant ridge is parked over the middle of the country and no ensemble weakens it, everything strengthens and amplifies the ridge into June.
While there will be some chances for severe weather on the apex of the ridge up towards the Dakotas, the lack of quality moisture will be hard to overcome for much more than continued sporadic/scattered severe weather chances.
This is why you don’t try to become a professional storm chaser kids, seasons like this one, where weeks of quiet with nothing meaningful to show for tons of work become something that is part tragedy and part warning-story.
Pack it up, it’s over.
2)The Season is ALIVE
Now…despite all of that, the subtle pattern we’ve been in since early this month is persisting. Another low will give a glancing blow to the Plains, sending just enough energy to organize a few severe storms today through at least Saturday.
This is that type of stuff we talked about in the season preview. Mid-level flow will be anemic, heck, all flow is anemic. Moisture is just good enough. The hodograph shape is curved, albeit small. So a supercell or two amidst a lot of multi-cells with an eventual upscale growth into a linear complex seems to be the most likely outcome each day.
This is not late-May tornado outbreak weather to be sure — but it is a steady drumbeat pattern that may persist even into June despite the building ridging. Precip totals for the first 10-15 days of June on most ensembles are truly impressive, which points to an active regime where the ridging does not suppress storm activity completely but it does limit the amount of shear and moisture. So the storm season will continue for the Plains, just it will continue about where it’s been.
3)Catch Us Live
We’ll be out and about a lot of the upcoming days as time permits, the geography makes sense, and the setup is worthy enough. If you haven’t done so, it’s a great day to subscribe to our YouTube channel.