National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

Critical Fire Weather in the Plains; Severe Thunderstorms in the Upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes

Anomalously warm, dry and breezy conditions will bring elevated to critical fire weather conditions across portions of the Intermountain West into the central and southern Plains today. Strong to severe thunderstorms are possible across portions of the upper Mississippi River Valley to the Great Lakes tonight through the day Tuesday. Damaging gusts, hail, and heavy rainfall are likely. Read More >

Fig. 10. The KMAF 88D base reflectivity from 1729 to 2025 UTC showed Tropical Storm Claudette as it crossed the Rio Grande River into west Texas. The storm’s central circulation and convective spiral bands are easily seen. In addition, data from the Lightning Detection Network depicted very few cloud-to-ground strikes within the storm’s central precipitation shield with a much higher frequency of lighting strikes in the convective bands.