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Severe thunderstorms produce tornadoes, large hail and damaging winds across southern Wisconsin

By Scott Bachmeier •

1-minute GOES-19 Visible (0.64 µm) images with time-matched (+/- 3 minutes) plots of SPC Storm Reports, from 2030 UTC on 14 April to 0015 UTC on 15 April [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) Visible images (above) included time-matched (+/- 3 minutes) plots of SPC Storm Reports — which showed the tornadoes, large hail (up to 4.00″ in diameter) and damaging winds (as high as 88 mph) that occurred across much of southern Wisconsin (along with adjacent parts of far northeast Iowa and far southeast Minnesota) on 14 April 2026. Numerous overshooting tops were seen in the Visible images.

The corresponding 1-minute GOES-19 Infrared images (below) revealed pronounced enhanced-V cloud-top signatures with several of the severe thunderstorms.

1-minute GOES-19 Infrared (10.3 µm) images with time-matched (+/- 3 minutes) plots of SPC Storm Reports, from 2030 UTC on 14 April to 0031 UTC on 15 April [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

The coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures exhibited by pulses of overshooting tops were -78ºC (brighter white pixels embedded within dark black areas) — which corresponded to a significant (~2 km) overshoot of the Most Unstable (MU) air parcel’s Equilibrium Level (EL), according to plots of rawinsonde data from Davenport, Iowa (below). CAPE values of 4000-4300 J/kg indicated that significant instability was present south of a frontal boundary which was draped across Iowa, Wisconsin and lower Michigan.

Plots of rawinsonde data from Davenport, Iowa at 1800 UTC and 2100 UTC on 14 April [click to enlarge]

Plots of rawinsonde data from Davenport, Iowa at 1800 UTC and 2100 UTC on 14 April [click to enlarge]

Categories: GOES-19, Severe convection