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Storm chasing forecast update 5, for March 30
The unusually-active early spring continues in the Midwest and South at a level I don't recall seeing before in my career. We have a big tornado setup today in the lower Midwest as a shortwave ejects overtop of good low-level moisture and instability, focusing tornado risk from southern Illinois down through western Tennessee. Following that, a system shown for Wednesday is another with very big tornado outbreak potential across the Midwest and South:
GFS 500mb forecast for Wednesday evening, March 30
It feels a little weird skimming over today's decent-looking setup to hype up Wednesday, but the midweek system has all of the hallmarks of a significant tornado outbreak: a powerful trough spreading very fast flow overtop of very good moisture depth, along with an equally-strong low-level jet over the Midwest. Again though, there are many make-or-break details yet to be resolved in models that will be hard to pin down much earlier than the day before or even morning-of. What we can say at this point is that models are in fairly decent agreement on this system closely matching that of historic tornado outbreaks in the past.
As has been the case this entire month, the severe weather risk from both today's and Wednesday's systems will be entirely in the Midwest and South. So far, the Great Plains has been mostly west of all of this activity and therefore the chances of a Plains expedition has been, and will remain, low. Furthermore, beyond this upcoming week, the pattern across the continental US is shown quieting down considerably, and as such, Plains expedition prospects remain low for as far out as can reasonably be determined.
The following table charts the probabilities for a Plains storm chase expedition taking place for the date ranges shown:
| 2025 Plains Chase Expeditions - Probabilities as of March 30 |
| March 30-April 5 | 0% | |
| April 5-10 | 5% | |
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