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Severe Weather Threat May 16-18, 2026

SPC Forecasting and hourly model availability combined with instantaneous access to analysis of those makes it relatively easy to get within 2 hours of where a storm is likely to form. And when you throw out a Moderate risk for that one storm, you get what you got yesterday. Chasers putting their location on the their streams etc. Anyone with a cellphone and a car can do it in OK, KS, NE.
 
The LSRs did verify a small 30%, so the event was only really a bust from the CIG aspect. The lower half of the 15% could have also been removed but meh, that's splitting hairs.
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Central Ohio Wx said:
The LSRs did verify a small 30%, so the event was only really a bust from the CIG aspect. The lower half of the 15% could have also been removed but meh, that's splitting hairs.
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Did the tornado emergency play into this at all or was it purely the number of tornadoes?

Im still confused as to why they issued a tornado watch for my area last night AFTER the storms had already passed. Sirens started going off after things calmed down too. The amount of confusion and unnecessary panic both the NWS and SPC caused yesterday with some of their decisions is really dumbfounding.
 
Grand Poo Bah said:
Did the tornado emergency play into this at all or was it purely the number of tornadoes?

Im still confused as to why they issued a tornado watch for my area last night AFTER the storms had already passed. Sirens started going off after things calmed down too. The amount of confusion and unnecessary panic both the NWS and SPC caused yesterday with some of their decisions is really dumbfounding.
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The specific PPH I pulled is based solely off LSRs; there's another based on warnings but obviously not all warnings have tornadoes so that would be dumb to post, haha.

While the tornadoes weren't at all strong (and thus a significant underperformance from the CIG2 aspect), the 15% itself stuck in that very localized Quad-State area. Now, how many of those LSRs were individual tornadoes? We'll have to see.
 
UK_EF4 said:
2026 certainly seems like the year of conditional setups (so far, at least) and today seems no different. That being said it does seem a higher-end corridor of tornado potential may be setting up from NE Kansas into SW Iowa, including SE Nebraska and NW Missouri too.

Surface observations reveal an effective warm front (SPC has marked it as a stationary front but essentially similar) from N KS up into IA, and then a cold front extending to the SW across KS. Troughing is elongated along the northern frontal zone, but it seems a surface low has developed across N/C KS, as models said. There also appears to be an outflow boundary extending to the SE. I have crudely annotated some of these features but refer to the latest SPC MD for a professional's analysis of the situation.

The periphery of the 500mb trough impinges directly on these boundaries, and the speed max develops and ejects almost directly North-East with 70kt flow into NE by 00z. All the frontal boundaries will thus be well-forced on both the synoptic and frontal scales and so expect storms to develop quite widely from Kansas leading to an outbreak of at least hail and wind reports.

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However, despite the boundary-parallel flow, I still think there is a window for semi-discrete storms to the north-east of the low's centre. It seems likely a cluster of storms will develop at the surface low, and possibly even extending to the SE along the OFB. Simultaneously, a strong 700mb is already in place, and will aid in forcing the warm sector further North even as storms develop. Notice on this HRRR forecast GIF how the higher dew points shift into Iowa even as storms get underway. This seems to be 'opening up' a channel for surface based storms to move through.

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Meanwhile, the environment just along and south of this stationary/warm front is very favourable. This is a box-averaged sounding from the latest HRRR - note the fast storm motions - over 30kts and likely 40+ kts relative to the surface winds. Everyone can see the large amount of SRH swept out by the hodograph will favour strong low level mesocyclones, which also appear well vented. To me this suggests that clusters of discrete/semi discrete storms will likely race to the NE out of their initiation point. While there are valid concerns with precipitation loading and outflow dominance, the strong storm relative inflow especially closer to the front may aid in getting 'balanced' storms. Though certainly a failure mode is that storms become more outflow-dominant early on (Right Sounding) and struggle to become properly tornadic despite an improving environment. There also does seem to be the chance of a couple prefrontal cells also developing into NW MO/SW IA too.

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I think a fairly plausible scenario is we see 1-2 more dominant supercells that could produce a couple EF3+ tornadoes, and possibly the risk of a violent tornado too. It's very hard to say that with any real certainty as in situations like this with fewer storms to bring that risk, it relies much more on a 'perfect storm' of cell interactions to cause something nasty. Over time the storm mode will transition to more linear QLCS, but I feel as if continued embedded supercell/QLCS structures will provide further significant tornado risk to the north-east, given the environment will still remain favourable.

I would really watch the regions in satellite just along and to the south of the cloud/clear boundary on satellite that are still ahead of the surface low. Note this map is not intended to be an actual forecast, just visually highlighting the area I was talking about. Tornado risk obviously exists along the cold front too but will have much more of a tendency to get undercut/grow upscale and the environment seems a but less favourable. Certainly a day to tune into all the professionals at SPC and NWS Offices. Stay safe everyone!!

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Well... safe to say yesterday didn't really play out anything like this (thankfully!) - I definitely should have anticipated more the fact the northern mode where the favourable shear was located had a risk of becoming elevated, which is obviously what happened.

Though with 20 reports across a small area, in SPC terms the 15% probably verified I imagine. Though based on radar it seems the intensity distribution was more in line with CIG1 or no CIG at all.
 
buckeye05 said:
The issue is that the hobby was once, but is no longer a small, niche community almost entirely comprised of people who put in time to educate themselves about the subject matter, and learn the skills needed to be involved in a responsible and respectable capacity.

This is going to sound rude and insensitive, but I’m going through be blunt. In the past few years, the hobby and community has been inundated by a tsunami of spazzy, immature YouTube clickbait/livestreamer/chasing sim game addicted kids who are all pretty much one big collective Dunning-Krueger case study. You know the type I’m talking about. They know next to nothing, their obsession supersedes their actual skill/knowledge base by miles, and they have a baseless confidence that will put them behind the wheel for a chase as soon as they have a license despite their ignorance and inexperience. They have no fear or respect for these storms, and no respect or regard for the people who have been on the roads for many years.

I once made the mistake of chasing with one of these people years ago and I didn’t realize how incompetent he was until we were out on the plains. It was both terrifying and embarrassing, and I bailed before he had a chance to get us both killed. These people are EVERYWHERE now, and that is the problem in a nutshell.
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It's happening in the militaria and vintage computer hobbies too. They are being inundated by spoiled rich kids who know next to nothing, but have all the money in the world because meemaw is paying for their college.

On the bright side... if enough of these SPC outlooks bust, maybe it'll reduce the number of idiotic chasers out there not only being a general nuisance to local residents, but also clogging roads and (often) driving dangerously.
 
So looking back at RadarScope today, I see where the Tornado Emergency on May 17th for the Hebron tornado was legitimately warranted because you actually had a debris ball/signature on radar. Yesterday's not so much.
 
TheSuckZone said:
...Looking at the videos of chaser traffic we would have likely been dealing with possibly several fatalities from people in vehicles.
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This really deeply concerns me. The avoidable disaster is positively going to happen and be made far worse by those who already aren't following the 'rules' of safe chasing running over each other trying to escape the situation they willingly put themselves in blocking any escape for everyone else. I wish I knew the solution.

Yesterday wasn't as big as many expected but there were numerous spin-ups and shots you don't often see of tornadoes forming and almost forming with everything from wedges to ropes to multi-vortex twisters, so I won't call it a 'bust'.
 
Beachwalker said:
SPC Forecasting and hourly model availability combined with instantaneous access to analysis of those makes it relatively easy to get within 2 hours of where a storm is likely to form. And when you throw out a Moderate risk for that one storm, you get what you got yesterday. Chasers putting their location on the their streams etc. Anyone with a cellphone and a car can do it in OK, KS, NE.
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Reed Timmer and his team have had to take steps to hide their live positions because they noticed that there were a lot of people (mainly amateur chasers) who simply tried to follow them to storms and thus ended up clogging the roads. Other notable chasers might end up having to do similar things. One one hand, it would make it harder to find (and thus physically follow) them, thus potentially lowering the amount of traffic on the roads. On the other hand, it'll make it notably harder to immediately pinpoint their positions relative to storms and thus use their livestreams for ground truth. That sounds like a quite unfortunate dilemma to me...
 
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