The Plains Midwest tornadoes April 2026 storm system delivered confirmed damage across three states on April 13 and 14, following days of forecaster warnings about an elevated severe weather outbreak across the central United States. In Kansas, authorities in Franklin County reported several people with minor injuries after storms swept through Monday, April 14. About 50 miles southwest of Kansas City, the Franklin County sheriff’s office confirmed the injuries. In the town of Ottawa, officials reported structural damage to buildings but no deaths or injuries, and the National Weather Service dispatched a survey team to determine whether a tornado had touched down in the area.
In neighboring Miami County, the damage was more significant. The sheriff’s office confirmed that two people suffered minor injuries, several homes were destroyed, and recreational vehicles and campers were overturned by the winds. Power lines in Hillsdale were de-energized and kept offline until cleanup could be safely completed. The NWS office in Topeka is coordinating the damage assessments across the affected Kansas counties.
Plains Midwest tornadoes April 2026 also struck Minnesota and Wisconsin with confirmed touchdowns
Three tornadoes touched down in southern Minnesota as part of the same system, according to Jake Beitlich, a meteorologist with the NWS Twin Cities office. Reports of farm damage came in from several locations, and baseball-sized hail struck vehicles across affected areas. The combination of large hail and tornado touchdowns in a region that had already received significant rainfall in the days prior added to the stress on fields and farm infrastructure at the beginning of the corn and soybean planting window.
In Wisconsin, a tornado touched down near Gilman, a village of roughly 380 people in northwestern Wisconsin, though damage was described as minor. In the southwestern Wisconsin village of Steuben, home to about 120 people, the storms peeled the roof off a manufactured home. No injuries were reported in Wisconsin. However, more than 25,000 customers were left without power across the state Tuesday morning, according to poweroutage.us, and schools in the Madison area were forced to close Tuesday due to the lack of electricity. For more on what had been forecast ahead of this system, Agroinformacion reported on the four-day outbreak forecast that identified the Corn Belt as being at elevated risk.
Flooding threat and Michigan dam emergency add to the regional pressure
Beyond the tornado and hail damage, forecasters warned of significant river and small stream flooding expected through the end of the week across the Upper Great Lakes region. The heaviest rainfall was forecast overnight into Wednesday, with scattered flash flooding possible across the same areas still recovering from the weekend’s severe weather.
In Michigan, the situation was already at emergency levels before the latest round of storms arrived. Governor Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency Friday at the Cheboygan Lock and Dam Complex, where record snowmelt from an unusually heavy March snowpack and recent rainfall had pushed water levels toward critical thresholds. As of Tuesday morning, the water level at Cheboygan was 7.68 inches below the top of the structure, and additional pumps were being deployed to move water toward Lake Huron. The combination of the ongoing spring flood risk, confirmed storm damage from the April 13-14 system, and a second round of severe weather forecast for Tuesday afternoon and evening means the agricultural and infrastructure pressure across the Plains-to-Great-Lakes corridor will continue into the middle of the week. The original storm damage report was published by the Associated Press via NBC News on April 14, 2026.