textproduct: Topeka

KEY MESSAGES

- Complicated severe weather setup tonight. Likely two rounds of severe, one afternoon and another late evening into the overnight hours. The second round will carry the largest severe threat, but large hail, damaging winds will be a the main threat. A few tornadoes will be possible across the southeast counties late Tonight.

- A few storms may linger into Monday, but severe weather threat mostly shifts to our east.

- Cooler pattern arrives for the rest of the week behind Monday's cold front. A few chances for light rain by mid week.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 201 PM CDT Sun Apr 26 2026

Early this afternoon water vapor satellite showed an upper level trough across the Four Corners region.

A complex surface pattern showed a cold front extending south- southwest from central NE into northwest OK. A warm front was located from Alva, OK, east-northeast across northern OK, just south of the KS/OK border.

Currently a QLCS was located across Dickinson County, southward to Newton KS. This QLCS will move east-northeast across much of east central KS and portions of northeast KS through the mid and late afternoon hours. Additionally, elevated storms may produce quarter size hail across the northern counties of the CWA.

There is a component of 0-3KM shear vector perpendicular to the line of storms may provide a low chance for weak and brief meso vortex tornadoes as this line moves into a slightly more favorable environment across east central and portions of northeast KS. However, the primary threat with this QLCS will be damaging wind gusts and large hail

The QLCS should exit the CWA after 4 PM and we may see a break in the thunderstorm activity through much of the evening hours.

The cold front across western KS is not showing signs of frontolysis and the newer CAMs are showing a surface low developing across northwest OK and tracking northeast to ICT, then northeast into the far southeast counties of the CWA. This will only allow the surface warm front to reach south central and southeast KS. The dryline will punch northeast from northwest OK into south central KS late this evening. The CAMs continue to show the potential for supercell thunderstorms developing across south central KS and north central OK, moving east-northeast northeast into southeast KS. The northern supercells may reach into the far southeast counties of the CWA. If these supercell thunderstorms become surface based, they may produce a few tornadoes, given forecast hodographs with strong sfc-3km low-level shear. The uncertainty in a supercell being surface based may preclude any damaging tornado threat during the early morning hours of Monday. Elevated supercell will be possible north of the warm front across much of northeast and east central KS. These rotating storms may produce large hail and possibly isolated damaging wind gusts. A few CAMs show the potential for training thunderstorms across northeast KS where 2 to 4 inches of rainfall may occur and cause some flooding of rivers and creeks. Therefore a flood watch has been issued for the northeast and portion of east central KS.

The next shift may need to issue a flood watch for our southeast counties if training of supercell thunderstorms occur, but the current thinking is these training supercells will remain southeast of the CWA.

The storms should move east as a cold front pushes east of the CWA during the mid and late morning hours of Monday.

We will see a break from the severe weather through the next 7 days. The surface front will become stationary across central TX and southern stream H5 troughs will move east across TX. There may be some showers and thunderstorms Thursday into Thursday night as the H5 trough passes south of the area and surface cold front pushes southward across the CWA.

AVIATION /00Z TAFS THROUGH 00Z MONDAY/

Issued at 617 PM CDT Sun Apr 26 2026

TAFs will remain convection focused over the first half of the period. Should continued to see a break in storms for the first few hours o the period before storms move in from the south around and after midnight. Some MVFR CIGs should precede storms with winds returning back towards the southeast. Convection should exit east of the TAFs by 7-8 AM Monday morning with winds veering towards the west for the remainder of the period.

TOP WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

Flood Watch through Monday afternoon for KSZ010-KSZ011-KSZ012- KSZ023-KSZ024-KSZ026-KSZ039-KSZ040.