The focus has clearly been on the eastern half of the state, and more specifically, along and southeast of the Turnpike. Note the quick drop off of storm reports once you get west of Great Bend and Hays. Every cold front that has pushed through hasn't encountered that rich, Gulf humidity until it made it east of I-135. Our tornado count is right around 30 for 2026, which is on track to outpace 2025, but still well below the average of 80 that Kansas expects in a year.
May outlook:
It sure looks like the month overall is drier than average - doubt you'll be surprised by that considering the trends as of late. Here's the updated map:
Even locations that have been wetter in April may be trending drier for the upcoming 30 days (talking about eastern Kansas).
Temperatures:
I still feel strongly about May overall being slightly cooler than average. One could be concerned that a lack of rain and sub-soil moisture would allow temperatures to soar, but we continue to see signs of cooler air dominating the areas along and east of the Rockies. This doesn't look like record cool, but doubtful that summer heat takes over like it did in March.
Waiting on rain is testing everyone's patience. We continue to talk about the El Nino and a potential shift toward some better potential of rainfall. Our longer range data still shows that for summer and into early fall. It is hard to imagine that when everything lately has gone around us, but I still think a shakeup in the dry pattern is coming.
Hopefully it is in time for the fall crops, which I would suspect it would be, but we should also note that summer rains can be very scattered, in which case some will be left out. As you well know, our models aren't perfect and their accuracy may have had some recent setbacks, but we continue to dig into the data as best we can to unlock some downstream clues.
Thanks for reading!
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