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As we advance another week into March, the first days of April are beginning to move into the 10-day window of reasonable long-range forecasts. The deterministic models and the ensembles are indicating that the regime of stubborn south-central US ridging/eastern troughing may begin to break down by the end of the month, allowing a more progressive pattern to emerge. "Progressive" means that the waves in the upper jet move quickly across the country instead of stalling, meaning any given jet configuration - be it good or bad for storms - doesn't stick around very long.
GFS 500mb forecast for March 31
Model forecasts of progressive patterns - particularly their smaller-scale details - are typically very unreliable beyond a few days, so we don't really know yet where and in what configuration the waves in this upcoming sequence will be. The GFS's plot above is just one of many possibilities. The current forecasts are in somewhat of an agreement on placing the southern stream jet's wave train more across the lower third of the USA. While that placement isn't out of the ordinary for this time of year, it means that meaningful moisture transport northward on the front side of each wave may be stunted, with any northward surges anemic and short-lived. Successive strong cold fronts on the back side of each wave are also shown shoving this air back into the Gulf of Mexico, requiring the next wave to fully "rebuild from scratch" the low-level moisture in the Plains and Midwest.
That being said, storm-supporting moisture is indeed shown making it past Interstate 40 - and even farther north - in advance of some of these waves. That indicates things could be at least mildly active for lightning into the first week of April. The bad news is that some of the waves will also be pulling more slugs of cold air southward as they depart, meaning there could be some wild temperature swings as winter and spring deliver alternating punches. Encouraging, though, is that the reservoir of arctic air in Canada is shown gradually shrinking over the next 2 weeks - not enough to completely cease being a threat to us, but signalling that winter is increasingly going to have a tougher time making it down here (as you'd expect going into April).
To summarize, things look potentially active for storms by the end of the month in the Plains and Midwest - but any notable severe weather during this time may be confined to the southern tier US states (south of Interstate 40). Accordingly, chances of a Great Plains expedition will remain low as we move into April.
2026 Plains Chase Expeditions - Probabilities as of March 23
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