textproduct: Omaha/Valley

KEY MESSAGES

- Isolated showers and storms mainly over northeast Nebraska tonight.

- The next substantial chance for thunderstorms arrives early in the day Thursday. The highest chance for storms (40-70%) looks to occur across central and southern Nebraska.

- Very warm and humid conditions return this weekend with the Heat Index likely exceeding 100 degrees starting Sunday.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 942 PM CDT Tue Jun 23 2026

A cold front is moving into northeast Nebraska this evening with a few showers struggling to develop along the front. Despite 1000-1500J/kg of SBCAPE, storms are struggling possibly due to confluence on the nose of the right exit region of the Jet Streak inhibiting weak forcing along the cold front. Could also be more neutral lapse rates from 850-700mb which weak forcing is struggling to make it through. Whatever the case, with the front weakening even further through the night, rain chances are dropping off quite a bit with little-to-no rain expected outside of a few isolated showers in northeast Nebraska.

Looking at the broad upper-level pattern, we have weak ridging over the Desert Southwest with nearly zonal flow over the Northern Plains, only slightly oriented northwest to southeast. Flow stays fairly zonal through the end of the week. With this pattern, we watch closely for shortwaves bringing periodic chances for showers and storms. On Wednesday afternoon we'll be watching storm development over western Nebraska, though the northwesterly component in the steering flow should keep these tracking southeast into Kansas Wednesday night. Meanwhile, we stay mostly dry with highs in the upper 70s to low 80s.

Thursday another shortwave will help to flatten the steering flow leading to more west-east storm movement, but guidance has tended to develop this next MCS to our south, mainly over north-central and northeast Kansas. This will keep a 20-40 percent chance of showers and storms though overnight Thursday into early Friday for a portion of southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa.

Friday looks mostly dry as ridging starts to build over Nebraska into western Iowa. A stronger trough moving into the PacNW helps to buckle the upper-level flow building a ridge over the Northern Plains. This ridge only grows going into the weekend as the trough over the PacNW deepens along the West Coast amplifying the downstream ridge. As this occurs, we'll see increased warm-air and moisture advection into the region leading to starkly warmer temperatures with highs back in the mid-to-upper 80s on Saturday and low-to-mid 90s on Sunday. Humidity will become a concern too, with heat indices getting into the upper 90s to low 100s by the afternoon on Sunday. The hot, humid weather continues into early next week with rain chances staying north of our area through Monday. Our next chance of storms will be possible as a shortwave rides over the ridge Monday night into early Tuesday, though placement of this system is still somewhat up-in-the-air due to this being farther out in the forecast period.

Next week is just looking darn hot with this initial ridge over the area early next week, only to be replaced by another ridge building up to our west later in the week. While we could still see periodic overnight MCS development help to bring chances for rainfall, weather during the day is looking to stay hot and humid.

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z THURSDAY/

Issued at 1220 AM CDT Wed Jun 24 2026

Showers and a few isolated storms will continue working south through the area overnight, though should be on a dissipating trend, with OFK the most likely to see any precip. Some additional showers and storms are possible after 00Z, though confidence in coverage and exact timing remain too low to include mention at this time (20-30% chance at OFK and LNK). Otherwise, VFR conditions are expected to prevail through the period with SCT to BKN clouds at 4000-7000 ft agl. Southwesterly winds early in the period will become westerly to northwesterly through the day, with speeds generally remaining under 10 kts.

OAX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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