textproduct: Omaha/Valley

KEY MESSAGES

- There is a 15-30% chance of some showers and storms through 10 AM Tuesday, mainly in southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa. A few could produce gusty winds or small hail, but severe weather is not expected.

- Cooler weather returns by Wednesday with high temperatures falling into the mid 70s to mid 80s through Friday. There will be increasing chances for showers and storms Wednesday through Friday.

- Warm weather looks to return by the weekend, with widespread 90s by Sunday..

DISCUSSION

Issued at 1114 PM CDT Mon Jul 20 2026

Aside from a couple pop up storms earlier, it had been pretty quiet across the region as the well-advertised cold front continued its southward progress across the area. That said, a few storms had started to pop up in vicinity of the front in southwest Iowa as of 1030 PM. With the front quickly scouring out instability, these should be fairly short-lived, but a few could produce some small hail or gusty winds through 1-2 AM. Guidance then suggests we'll see more development well behind the front after midnight as some weak shortwave energy clips the area and we see a little strengthening frontogenesis as northerly low level flow ramps up. However, with lack of instability, not expecting any severe weather with these, and even lightning strikes may be few and far between.

That precip should exit south/dissipate toward 9-10 AM and give way to a warm, but much more "manageable" day, with highs in the mid 80s to around 90 and a nice north breeze. The HRRR also continues to show smoke moving in behind the front, but keeps near-surface concentrations rather low, with upstream observations currently showing no visibility reductions, so thinking it'll manifest mainly as some milky looking skies.

We'll be much cooler Wednesday through Friday, as the upper level ridge axis gets pushed well back to our west and a secondary cold front passes through. Highs will fall into the mid 70s to lower 80s all three days. In addition, we'll have several chances for more widespread showers and storms as various shortwaves push through the area. The first now looks to arrive Wednesday afternoon with a second stronger and more persistent stream of shortwave energy arriving early Thursday and lingering into early Friday. Chances are generally in the 40-80% range at times through this period, with the highest being mostly in southeast NE, where consensus paints a 30- 50% chance of at least 1" of rain. Definitely still some timing kinks to work out as we get closer, as there will likely be some occasional breaks in the rain and people will certainly want to get out and enjoy the temperatures in the 70s.

Unfortunately, those nicer temperatures will be short-lived as the upper level ridge axis pushes back eastward this weekend. Expect highs to climb back into the upper 80s to mid 90s on Saturday followed by widespread 90s Sunday into next week. There could also be a couple additional storm chances in there as the warm and humid airmass returns and a few weak shortwaves ripple through the flow, but still lots of details to work out there. As far as severe weather chances go, various machine learning algorithms generally keep us around or under 5% over the next 7 days.

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z WEDNESDAY/

Issued at 1228 AM CDT Tue Jul 21 2026

Overnight and early morning showers are the main concern of the early TAF period, with VFR conditions set to hold through the next 24 hours. Winds are currently out of the north with an area of scattered to broken clouds at FL060-090 that have seen some shower and storm development, with more widespread activity expected to develop between 08-10z. Confidence is not high enough that thunder will be present with many of the later storms (right now, most of them have it), but if they ignite earlier, they will likely have some thunder with them. Otherwise, storm activity is expected to decrease closer to sunrise with a gusty afternoon forecast with winds out of the north-northwest that let up by 00z.

OAX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

NE...None. IA...None.