Editor's Note:

As the year comes to a close, we've once again asked the DTN/Progressive Farmer reporting team to pick out the most significant, most fun, or otherwise their favorite, story of 2025. We hope you enjoy our writers' favorites, continuing the series with today's story by DTN Ag Meteorologist John Baranick.

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DTN is running its annual series at the end of the year again to focus on the stories the writers have found to be their favorite of the year. Personally, this is always a tough topic to discuss because usually the most important weather that occurs during a year is tragic in some way, shape or form. Whether it's a derecho, a heatwave, or drought, readers want to know so they can be prepared. But that also means damage has or is about to occur.

In those stories, I do my best to provide context to the reader about the threats and potential hazards. Explaining the details behind a number or map is where meteorologists can give some insight and help readers or viewers understand how significant a threat may actually turn out to be.

That can sometimes leave a lot of gray area; but it is these types of situations I enjoy discussing, because it can verify a threat or help calm some nerves. One such occasion occurred with a potential severe weather outbreak on April 28.

Sometimes it's not enough to just look at a Convective Outlook from the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) and understand the threat. The meteorologists there do a fantastic job of outlining the threat, but context can sometimes be missing or too complex for non-meteorologists. When a new Day 1 outlook was released by the SPC on the morning of April 28, 2025, there was a rather large "moderate risk" of severe weather across the Upper Midwest. However, the SPC staff admitted there was some uncertainty with that risk.

A moderate risk, despite the connotation, is serious business. Only a dozen or so are issued in a given year. I felt it was necessary for folks in these areas to understand that perhaps this moderate risk may not verify in all the outlined area. And while the threat was real, the results didn't match the threat, as Iowa largely missed out on the event.

However, a major outbreak of hail and a few tornadoes did occur across a portion of the moderate risk zone from southern Minnesota into Wisconsin. So, while severe weather did occur in parts of the region designated by the moderate risk, many areas saw very little rain let alone strong thunderstorms.

These are the types of situations where explaining threats meant more than just staring at the SPC's map. I would not count this as a miss by the SPC -- the threat during that day was significant. It just didn't pan out. Sometimes the risks do not manifest, and sometimes they're more intense under a lower threat level.

In fact, the next day, April 29, had a much more widespread severe event with significant wind damage from Texas to New York and a few more tornadoes than the moderate risk a day before. The highest designation the SPC gave for April 29 was an "enhanced risk," one risk level lower than moderate.

If you want to read the story, you can find that here: https://www.dtnpf.com/… .

Verification for the severe weather event can be found here:

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/… .

John Baranick can be reached at john.baranick@dtn.com

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