Midwest and Great Lakes Brace for Severe Storms Following Night of Tornadoes

Between April 13 and April 17, 2026, a succession of severe weather outbreaks hammered the Midwest and Great Lakes with more than 40 confirmed tornadoes, record-breaking hail, and flooding that left at least three people dead, hundreds of structures damaged, and over 130 million Americans under threat at the outbreak's peak [1][4]. As communities dig out from the wreckage, the storm sequence has forced an uncomfortable reckoning: whether the National Weather Service has the staffing and funding to protect the public, and whether this kind of multi-day siege is becoming the new normal.

The Outbreak: Five Days of Tornadoes Across Seven States

The first wave struck on the evening of April 13, when at least 14 tornadoes touched down across Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin [3]. The strongest confirmed tornado from that night was an EF-2 that struck Ottawa in Franklin County, Kansas, between 7:23 and 7:48 p.m. CDT, with estimated peak winds of 125 mph. It carved a path 7.3 miles long and up to 100 yards wide through the southern side of the city, injuring three people and damaging homes, businesses, and power infrastructure [5]. An additional EF-2 struck Hillsdale, Kansas, and an EF-1 tracked nearly 24 miles between Blue Mound, Kansas, and Worland, Missouri [6].

Severe weather continued through April 14–16, with storms producing giant hail — some stones measured 5 to 6 inches in diameter — across eastern Iowa and northern Illinois [1]. In Wisconsin, record rainfall exceeding 10 inches in parts of Milwaukee and Waukesha counties triggered historic flooding that prompted Governor Tony Evers to declare a state of emergency [17]. Floodwaters stranded drivers, forced evacuations, and required swift-water rescues across multiple counties [18].

The second major tornado outbreak arrived on April 17, when the Storm Prediction Center issued Tornado Watch 129 for portions of Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin [7]. That day produced more than 20 additional tornado reports, with impacts concentrated in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota [4]. In Marathon County, Wisconsin, approximately 75 homes in the town of Ringle (population 1,711) sustained damage after a tornado moved through, starting in Kronenwetter and tracking north. Ringle Fire Chief Chris Kielman reported that some residents were trapped in basements but that no one was killed or injured [8]. In Lena, Illinois, a tornado caused significant structural damage to the town's high school and elementary school [9]. In Belton, Missouri, extensive damage hit homes and power lines, though no injuries were reported [10].

Seven tornadoes were confirmed in southern Wisconsin during the April 14–16 window alone [11].

Casualties and Damage

As of April 18, confirmed fatalities from the broader April severe weather season stand at three — all tied to a large EF-3 tornado that struck Kankakee County, Illinois, and Lake Village, Indiana, on March 10, 2026 [12]. That tornado tracked 36.6 miles with peak winds near 150 mph, damaging nearly 500 buildings in Kankakee County alone — 30 of them completely destroyed — and killing 65-year-old Army veteran Maurice Norington in Aroma Park and two additional people in Lake Village, Indiana [13][14]. Eleven others were injured along its path [12].

The April 13–17 outbreak itself produced at least one confirmed injury, though NWS survey teams remain in the field and final counts are pending [4]. Hundreds of structures across multiple states sustained damage. Dollar-value estimates for the multi-day outbreak are not yet available, as damage assessments continue.

Source: NOAA SPC

Data as of Jan 1, 2025CSV

Historically, April averages 178 tornadoes nationwide, with Illinois (15), Kansas (14), Missouri (11), and Iowa (10) among the most active states in the region [15]. The 40-plus tornadoes reported across the Midwest during this five-day window is well above what would be expected for a single week in mid-April, though multi-day outbreaks are not unprecedented.

The Warning Gap: Watches That Came Too Late

The April 13 event exposed a failure in the watch-and-warning system. The NWS Storm Prediction Center had not anticipated a tornado threat for the Kansas City area in its Monday afternoon outlook. Tornado watches were issued around 6:35 p.m. — roughly 30 minutes before the first tornado struck [16]. Standard practice calls for watches to be issued hours in advance.

The average lead time for a tornado warning — the more urgent, location-specific alert — ranges from 5 to 10 minutes nationally, with some cases producing little to no warning [20]. An experimental Warn-on-Forecast system demonstrated a 75-minute lead time for a violent EF-4 tornado in Greenfield, Iowa, in May 2024, but the system is not yet operational at scale [21].

Democratic Senators Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan wrote to NWS Director Ken Graham asking whether short staffing played a role in the Kansas warning failure and how the agency planned to improve alerts [16].

Missing Data: Weather Balloons and the Staffing Crisis

The Kansas watch delay has become a flashpoint in the debate over NWS staffing. On April 13, many Great Plains forecasting offices did not launch weather balloons at their traditional 7 a.m. time. Instead, the launches were moved to noon — a change that meteorologists attribute to staffing shortages [16].

The consequence: when morning forecast models ran, they lacked balloon data from the central Plains, the Four Corners region, and the northern Plains — exactly the areas where storms were developing that evening. "We are missing data at the normal times," said Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist with the Wisconsin Environmental Mesonet [16].

Alan Gerard, a retired NOAA director, put it more starkly: "It's like we're conducting a real-time experiment without any way to evaluate what the impacts of it are" [16].

Source: Scientific American / NWS

Data as of Apr 1, 2026CSV

The NWS currently has a 19% vacancy rate across its 122 field offices, with 52 offices understaffed by more than 20% and some branches down by 40% or more [22]. A typical forecast office operates with 25 to 30 people. The administration cut roughly 600 positions from the NWS workforce of about 4,200 through buyouts and terminations of probationary workers [22]. At least eight of the 122 offices can no longer operate around the clock, and regular twice-daily upper-air balloon soundings — which provide three-dimensional atmospheric data essential for tornado forecasting — have been lost from about 18% of the nation's upper-air stations [22].

The NWS Goodland, Kansas, office ceased nighttime forecasting in May due to staffing shortages and staff burnout [23]. NOAA's proposed 2026 budget would close all NOAA labs, including the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the research center founded in 1964 that has driven advances in tornado prediction [22].

Five former NWS directors warned in a joint letter: "Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life" [24].

Who Is Most Vulnerable

Tornado fatalities disproportionately affect mobile home residents. On average, 54% of all tornado-related deaths occur in mobile or manufactured homes, despite these structures representing roughly 5–6% of U.S. housing stock [25]. Residents of mobile homes are 15 to 20 times more likely to be killed in a tornado compared to occupants of permanent structures [25]. An EF-1 tornado — the second-lowest category — can completely destroy a mobile home.

The demographics of manufactured housing compound this vulnerability. About one-third of mobile home residents earn less than $20,000 per year, and 31% of households in mobile home parks live in poverty — more than double the poverty rate among conventional homeowners (9%) [25]. Approximately 40% of mobile home occupants own their home but rent their lot, creating ambiguous legal status that complicates both insurance coverage and disaster assistance [25].

Rural communities also face barriers. Areas without reliable cellular service may not receive Wireless Emergency Alerts, the primary mechanism by which the NWS pushes tornado warnings to phones. Non-English speakers face additional obstacles, as the bulk of NWS warnings and public communication are issued in English.

In the April 17 outbreak, a temporary shelter was established at a local church near Rochester, Minnesota, for displaced residents [10]. The full picture of who was most affected will become clearer as damage assessments and census-tract data are compiled.

Atmospheric Drivers: Jet Stream, Moisture, and a Decaying La Niña

Meteorologists attribute the outbreak to a "very dynamic weather pattern" combining very moist air with a strong jet stream across the central United States and Great Lakes [26]. A dip in the jet stream — which acts as an atmospheric conveyor belt — ushered in an area of low pressure from the Northwest, igniting successive rounds of severe thunderstorms [26].

Surface dewpoints ran well above seasonal norms, with mixed-layer CAPE values of 2,500–3,000 joules per kilogram — a measure of atmospheric instability that indicates a significant amount of energy available for thunderstorm updrafts [1]. Deep-layer wind shear of 40–45 mph supported organized supercell storms capable of producing tornadoes, while strengthening rear-inflow jets fueled extensive swaths of damaging straight-line winds [1].

The 2026 tornado season has coincided with a decaying La Niña pattern. La Niña — the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation — tends to shift the jet stream in ways that favor severe weather in the central and southern Plains. Seasonal forecasts published earlier this year anticipated a front-loaded tornado season, with heightened activity in March and early April [27].

The Climate Attribution Debate

Whether climate change is making Midwest tornado outbreaks more frequent or more intense remains one of atmospheric science's most contested questions.

Research published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science found that tornado environments — the atmospheric conditions conducive to tornadoes — have increased in the Midwest and Southeast while decreasing over the traditional High Plains [28]. Tornado counts have shifted eastward. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions notes that while the link between tornadoes and climate change "is currently not fully understood," a warming atmosphere holds more moisture and produces more instability, both of which are ingredients for severe convection [29].

But the strongest case for skepticism comes from the data itself. The Heritage Foundation, in a report submitted to the House Natural Resources Committee in April 2025, argued that strong tornado counts (EF-3 and above) have declined by about 50% since the 1950s, and that the United States has not experienced an EF-5 tornado in over a decade — the longest such gap since at least 1950 [30]. When tornado damage is normalized for population growth, income, and housing expansion, the Foundation argued, total damage has also declined over time [30]. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report acknowledged that "attribution of certain classes of extreme weather (e.g., tornadoes) is beyond current modelling and theoretical capabilities" [30].

Penn State meteorologist Paul Markowski, a leading tornado researcher, has emphasized that while warming increases atmospheric moisture and instability, wind shear — the other critical ingredient for tornadoes — may actually decrease in some climate projections, producing offsetting effects [31]. The honest answer, as Inside Climate News reported in March 2026, is that "researchers are now working to determine whether these shifting tornado patterns bear the fingerprints of climate change," and "sussing out their climate connection is even harder" than prediction [32].

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle, particularly La Niña phases, also correlates with tornado spikes — the 2011 super outbreak that killed 533 people occurred during a La Niña year [30]. Natural variability complicates any clean attribution.

What Comes Next: Ongoing Risk and Compromised Infrastructure

As of April 18, the Storm Prediction Center has maintained a Slight Risk (level 2 of 5) covering a broad swath from northern Texas to Iowa and southern Wisconsin, extending east into western Pennsylvania [33]. Cities including Kansas City, St. Louis, Des Moines, Chicago, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh remain under elevated threat for large hail and additional tornadoes [33].

The follow-on risk is compounded by infrastructure already weakened by the first five days of storms. In Wisconsin, multiple highways remain closed in both directions due to flooding, and a sinkhole near the Suamico River has consumed part of a road and pulled a power pole toward the water [34]. Hundreds of customers across eastern Iowa lost power during the April 17 storms [35]. The State Emergency Operations Center in Wisconsin has been coordinating requests for high-water vehicles, sandbagging equipment, and bottled water [17].

Flooded roads limit evacuation routes. Downed power lines complicate emergency response. Communities with structural damage to schools, like Lena, Illinois, lose potential emergency shelters [9]. The compounding effect — fresh storms hitting infrastructure that has not yet been repaired — is what emergency managers describe as cascading vulnerability.

Wisconsin Emergency Management has elevated its State Emergency Operations Center in response to the ongoing threat [17]. Governor Evers' state of emergency declaration enables the deployment of National Guard resources and expedited access to state emergency funds [17].

A System Under Strain

The April 2026 outbreak did not produce the kind of mass-casualty event that has periodically struck the Midwest — the 2011 Joplin tornado killed 158 people; the April 2011 super outbreak killed 348 across the Southeast. But it revealed stress fractures in the system designed to prevent such outcomes.

Weather balloon data missing from the models. Watches arriving 30 minutes before touchdown instead of hours. Forecast offices unable to staff overnight shifts. A research lab that pioneered tornado forecasting facing closure.

Climate scientist Daniel Swain warned that forecast quality "cracks are really now starting to show," with potential for significant harm "when degradation becomes apparent during major weather events" [22]. The NWS budget — less than $1.4 billion annually, or roughly $4 per American — generates an estimated $100 billion in economic benefit each year, a return of roughly 70-to-1 [22].

Whether the April storms represent a climatic shift or an unremarkable stretch of spring weather is a question science cannot yet answer definitively. What is clear is that the infrastructure for answering it — and for warning the public when the next outbreak arrives — is being reduced at the same time the questions are becoming more urgent.