2026 Gathering of Eagles Conference Report

There ended up being, I would say, maybe less tornadoes than I was expecting, but still a pretty dangerous day of severe thunderstorms yesterday across the Midwest.

And the ingredients for tornadoes need the combination of warmth and moisture, which in the spring and summer is plentiful.

You have Plenty of warm air around and plentiful moisture that usually draw northward from the Gulf into the parts of the Midwest and the plains.

Then you have to have enough wind shear in the atmosphere for tornadoes.

And wind shear is basically the change of wind speed or direction with height.

So say a south wind at the surface, wind from the south, and then as you go higher up in the atmosphere, wind from the west.

That's a good sort of example of wind shear.

And you have to have somebody to sort of trigger the storms to form.

and you typically have colder air higher in the atmosphere than you do at the surface, but the bigger the difference there between the surface and aloft can be favorable as well.

And I think an important part about tornadoes is that there are thunderstorms all day, every day across the world, and only a very, very, very, very small percentage, I don't know the percentage of it, is probably well less than 1% of thunderstorms produce tornadoes.

So it's a pretty rare setup to get them.

But we happen to be the, in the United States, we happen to be the, and North America, we happen to be the that receives the most tornadoes every year because of our unique geography.

Yeah, we were communicating with some of our nonprofit guys, and the one in Mid-Illinois was hunkered down because they were on a tornado warning, and we ended up with a tornado watch.

It's crazy.

But one other comment you made, there could be a swarm of tornadoes if the individual thunderstorms stay separate, as in discrete cells, for an extended period as opposed to quickly merging into one line of storms.

How does that work, Dan?

So the most intense tornadoes typically form from what are called supercell thunderstorms.

And supercell thunderstorms are individual thunderstorms they're usually by themselves um and if you've ever seen what people sometimes refer to like as a hook echo on the thunderstorm certainly it looks like a hook at the bottom usually on the sort of bottom left side or the southwest side of the storm that's what typically produces a tornado um so those are more favorable for longer more intense tornadoes you can get tornadoes uh in in um that that occur as well in big lines of thunderstorms.

But typically when a thunderstorm complex forms into one big line, the most prevalent hazard then is wind.

So the concern yesterday was that there was going to be numerous supercell thunderstorms producing tornadoes across the Midwest.

There were numerous supercell thunderstorms, not all of them, which is pretty typical, but there were only a few of them that produced a tornado.

But there was many damaging wind reports, and there were some three-inch-plus hail reports as well yesterday.

So a pretty impactful day, not the most intense day we've seen so far this season, but it's been a very active season for severe weather.

And actually, Illinois has been the place that's had the most tornadoes this year, which is a bit unusual, and they have a record now.

It needs to be finalized Um, but they've surpassed the most tornadoes in a year.

There ended up being, I would say, maybe less tornadoes than I was expecting, but still a pretty dangerous day of severe thunderstorms yesterday across the Midwest.

And the ingredients for tornadoes need the combination of warmth and moisture, which in the spring and summer is plentiful.

You have Plenty of warm air around and plentiful moisture that usually draw northward from the Gulf into the parts of the Midwest and the plains.

Then you have to have enough wind shear in the atmosphere for tornadoes.

And wind shear is basically the change of wind speed or direction with height.

So say a south wind at the surface, wind from the south, and then as you go higher up in the atmosphere, wind from the west.

That's a good sort of example of wind shear.

And you have to have somebody to sort of trigger the storms to form.

and you typically have colder air higher in the atmosphere than you do at the surface, but the bigger the difference there between the surface and aloft can be favorable as well.

And I think an important part about tornadoes is that there are thunderstorms all day, every day across the world, and only a very, very, very, very small percentage, I don't know the percentage of it, is probably well less than 1% of thunderstorms produce tornadoes.

So it's a pretty rare setup to get them.

But we happen to be the, in the United States, we happen to be the, and North America, we happen to be the that receives the most tornadoes every year because of our unique geography.

Yeah, we were communicating with some of our nonprofit guys, and the one in Mid-Illinois was hunkered down because they were on a tornado warning, and we ended up with a tornado watch.

It's crazy.

But one other comment you made, there could be a swarm of tornadoes if the individual thunderstorms stay separate, as in discrete cells, for an extended period as opposed to quickly merging into one line of storms.

How does that work, Dan?

So the most intense tornadoes typically form from what are called supercell thunderstorms.

And supercell thunderstorms are individual thunderstorms they're usually by themselves um and if you've ever seen what people sometimes refer to like as a hook echo on the thunderstorm certainly it looks like a hook at the bottom usually on the sort of bottom left side or the southwest side of the storm that's what typically produces a tornado um so those are more favorable for longer more intense tornadoes you can get tornadoes uh in in um that that occur as well in big lines of thunderstorms.

But typically when a thunderstorm complex forms into one big line, the most prevalent hazard then is wind.

So the concern yesterday was that there was going to be numerous supercell thunderstorms producing tornadoes across the Midwest.

There were numerous supercell thunderstorms, not all of them, which is pretty typical, but there were only a few of them that produced a tornado.

But there was many damaging wind reports, and there were some three-inch-plus hail reports as well yesterday.

So a pretty impactful day, not the most intense day we've seen so far this season, but it's been a very active season for severe weather.

And actually, Illinois has been the place that's had the most tornadoes this year, which is a bit unusual, and they have a record now.

It needs to be finalized Um, but they've surpassed the most tornadoes in a year.