2026-04-23 Event: IA/MO/KS/OK/TX

[Matthew Crowther]

Time to discuss the next Plains event. Maybe this time OK will produce, unlike the past two tornado bust days. No real surging cold front, modest WSW mid-upper flow, plenty of CAPE. Unlike the last event at this time range, models in better agreement with Euro pretty much in step with the GFS, not a ton of ensemble spread.
Prelim target: northern OK/south central KS.

 

[Matthew Crowther]

Well, the target mentioned above may not have convection at all, despite it being a relatively weak cold front, almost all models show a squall line maybe extending into central KS with no dryline convection. One or two CAMs have a lone supercell or two in OK, but that seems like an awfully risky play. We are leaving today anyway, more to set up for the weekend, but maybe we will get lucky tomorrow,

 

[Derek Weston]

500 energy seems a little miss-timed from first glance at this here this morning...

Edits, thought this was the weekend setup... NM

 

[Mike Smith]

Based on the Wednesday 12Z CAM's and the ICON (for synoptic-scale features), it looks to me like northeast Kansas and southeast Nebraska will be a likely area for tornadoes. A mesolow will develop between TOP and OMA. Pressures will be falling (something that wasn't the case with last week's events) and will be quite low (below 1000mb) for this late in the season. Nice difluence with the 500mb trough becoming more negatively tilted during the day.

My target would be around Topeka - Hiawatha. While hilly, the road network is good and many of the hilltops have few trees with good visibility. Look for isolated supercells and/or a tail-end Charlie.

 

[Matthew Crowther]

SPC now has a 10% hatched tornado risk in southern KS to extreme northern OK.
There will likely be massive chaser hordes.

 

[Randy Jennings]

Between my chase partner being unbale to chase today and a lot of things to do both at work and home, I don't plan on making the drive from my base in DFW to the more obvious target area in KS. So my focus is on the dryline in OK.

I can't find a single model that convects along the dry line this afternoon/evening except for the RRFS A (and I don't think any of us take that model seriously right now). In my many years of chasing I've learned that while convective allowing models often over convent, that taking a null convection run and wish casting it to convent rarely works out well for my chase.

But here is the kicker - when I click along the dryline in OK to get a forecast sounding to see why it isn't convecting it is hard to see why it isn't. The thermodynamics are there. Even the kinematics look good (for a change vs last week). Lots of instability, no (or at least very little) cap, and convective temp reached. Every model I clicked for a sounding on showed "TOR" and I even got one that said "PDS TOR". All this but no convection in models.

So today looks like a high risk of bust, but high reward if it happens day on the dryline. Today is a day to really pay attention to the real observations (heck every day is). When I look at that I notice that the OUN morning observed sounding has an observed CIN about 80 less than the HRRR run at the time. This could be an indication that the models think the cap is stronger than it really is. If this trend continues and we get some clearing in the clouds to get it a tad warmer, today could be an interesting chase day on the dryline. The potential is there. Risk of bust is high.

 

[Mike Smith]

In case anyone is interested, I haven't given up on forecast of enhanced tornado risk over northeast Kansas (above).

 

[Randy Zipser]

Live up-to-minute regional severe weather coverage of tornadoes in NE on 2026-04-23:

 

[Dan Robinson]

This is quite the high-end classic event unfolding, likely multiple EF4+ tornadoes. Just a couple of videos:

Incredible intercept by Daniel Shaw on his live stream near Enid:

 

[JamesCaruso]

I was not able to watch things unfold “live” last night, and it’s a good thing or I would have been going crazy for not being out there But I’m having trouble getting my arms around what happened. The YouTube video showing the two tornados says one chaser was in Nardin and the other in Blackwell. Those towns are only 10 miles apart. So I assume these were from two mesos in the same complex? Was this a Pilger type situation? If so, why were the two tornados not close enough to be seen together?

And that was not the same supercell as the one that produced the tornado in Enid, correct? There are clearly two different tornadic supercells by about at ~8pm CDT on the archived radar, one in Enid and one near Ponca City. Based on archived radar and SPC storm reports, it looks like the Enid storm had not even formed at the time the northern storm produced, but I’m not sure of the exact time of those dual tornados.