I was wrong

 So far I have been very wrong about 2026 severe weather-wise. Around northwest Missouri, it has been a VERY active and scary year. These past weeks alone just proves why.

Very first-ever PDS TOR

On May 18th, I witnessed my first-ever PDS Tornado Warning for Maryville. It was very scary and I felt very dreadful. I love watching EAS scenarios on YouTube or revisiting severe weather outbreak documentaries from time to time. You never really think that your own city could ever be in any of those warnings mentioned, but May 18th changed that for me.

At about 5:41pm, the National Weather Service pushed out a bulletin stating that "a dangerous tornado was located near Fairfax (a small town to the direct west of Maryville), moving east a 45 mph." Now yes, the tornado was only radar-indicated, but radar isn't always updated by the minute. Radar-indicated tornadoes are scary because within seconds, it could form into a rope tornado then into a massive wedge. While you may think that isn't possible, I should mention the CAPE at that day and time was very volatile and values were OVER 5000.

5000mb of CAPE. That was UNHEARD OF for my area!!!

The warning was a bit confusing though, since it said radar-indicated, but the bulletin wording made it sound like it was on the ground. Luckily for Maryville (per usual), the storm went due north of the city. I can't find any evidence of a touch down in Maryville of this tornado but I had heard initial reports that it had touched down in a field near a truck stop just north of town. I do know that a significant tornado touched down as well in a rural area of a small town just to the north of Maryville.

Water everywhere

Flooding never happens in Maryville. We're a city on a hill. If flooding happened, it would be in the streets because all of the storm drains were plugged. Usually the 102 River to the east of town runs out of its banks but it never comes into town. It'd be the end of the world before that happened but here recently, after witnessing a late-night water rescue video on Facebook, I sometimes wonder.

In the past few days, we have received so much rainfall that the ground is over saturated! After a very dry winter (save for the snow), I expected 2026 to be a hot and dry year, with maybe 1 huge significant severe weather days. As of now, we're up to 1, but in the coming weeks I suspect we may be in for some more, particularly for flooding. I cannot tell you how many FFWs have been issued in the past week alone.

Tools I use

I have three tools I use when severe weather is expected:

1. NOAA Weather Radio - by far the A1#1 piece of equipment anyone should use. Weather radio has kept me up-to-date with watches, warnings, and advisories, but now I also use it in conjunction with an EAS decoder! This decoder decodes and saves the bulletins as wav files on my Mac computer. I should port this over to a smaller footprint, maybe like a Raspberry Pi Pico if it's capable.
2. FM Radio - KMA Radio on 99.1 keeps me posted on the incoming weather coming in from Nebraska and Iowa, and sometimes even the current weather conditions right here in Maryville. It may be 50 miles away, but it gives me time to prepare and even track storms on radar in real time as they approach. I rely on FM radio just as much as I do NWR, but both do have their uses. In recent times, my local FM radio stations have not been doing a good job in keeping up with the weather, which is very disappointing. On Wednesday, we had an early-morning power outage that lasted at least 2 hours, and NOT A SINGLE Maryville FM radio station was on the air. I actually spent that morning tracking severe weather moving through southern Iowa via KMA.
3. PivotalWeather.com - Most used piece of software next to my local NWS office website in KC/Pleasant Hill. This provides me with charts and data that I can use to estimate when severe weather will pop up the day before or on the day, as well as any hazards expected or anticipated. The more I use these charts, the more I see correlations with real-time weather conditions and understand the numbers, values, etc.

Surprisingly, I haven't really used ham radio that much this year for severe weather events. I used to, but with a lack of amateur radio participation in my area, it doesn't make much sense to unfortunately. Hopefully that can change in the next few weeks, as I'm planning to finally construct an interface for my packet node.

Just a bit of an update from my QTH, hopefully this year won't spiral out of control weather-wise.