REGIONS 376 COUNTIES · 5 REGIONAL SITES · NWS OFFICIAL Regions Severe Climate About
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FORECAST GREAT PLAINS
Weather & Climate · The Great Plains

Regions of Great Plains

Great Plains is too big for one forecast. The state splits into 5 regions, each with its own site — the same maps, the same live radar and the same climate record, scoped to the counties that actually share a sky. Every city in a region gets its own page underneath it.

The 5 Regions

Guide · Pick a region
Montana
Big Sky Country · I-90/94/15 · the Divide to the Hi-Line
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Montana is two states in one weather map. West of the Divide the Pacific gets in: Missoula and the Flathead run milder and wetter, and the valleys hold their inversions for weeks. East of it there is nothing between the Hi-Line and the Arctic, and Havre and Glasgow post some of the coldest readings in the lower 48. In between, the Rocky Mountain Front makes chinooks that have moved the thermometer 47 degrees in seven minutes at Loma — still the world record.
56
Counties
99
City Pages
I-90
Main Street
Montana
montana.forecastgreatplains.com
Wyoming
Cowboy State · I-80/25 · the Red Desert to the Bighorns
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Wyoming is the windiest state in the country and the emptiest but one, and the two facts make the same forecast. I-80 over Elk Mountain and Arlington closes on ground blizzards under a blue sky, with gates at Laramie and Rawlins and blow-over warnings for anything with a trailer. The mountains keep the snow — Togwotee, the Snowies, the Bighorns — while the Bighorn Basin below them at Worland is high desert that takes ten inches of precipitation a year.
23
Counties
73
City Pages
I-80
Main Street
Wyoming
wyoming.forecastgreatplains.com
Nebraska
Cornhusker State · I-80 · the Missouri to the Panhandle
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Nebraska is the state the Platte crosses, and the whole state is arranged along it: I-80 follows the river from the Missouri to the Wyoming line, and the weather follows I-80. The east is corn-belt humid and takes the derechos and the June supercells; the Sandhills in the middle are 20,000 square miles of grass-stabilized dune with almost no one on them; and the Panhandle is High Plains at 4,000 feet, close enough to the Rockies to get upslope snow when Omaha gets rain.
93
Counties
121
City Pages
I-80
Main Street
Nebraska
nebraska.forecastgreatplains.com
Kansas
Sunflower State · I-70/35 · the Flint Hills to the High Plains
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Kansas sits in the middle of Tornado Alley and has the storm climatology to prove it — Greensburg in 2007, Andover in 1991 and 2022, and a statewide average north of ninety tornadoes a year. The dryline sets up over the western third in spring and the supercells fire east of it toward Wichita. The state also tilts: Elkhart in the far southwest is 3,600 feet and semi-arid, the eastern border is 700 feet and humid, and the Flint Hills in between are the last big piece of unplowed tallgrass prairie in North America.
105
Counties
158
City Pages
I-70
Main Street
Kansas
kansas.forecastgreatplains.com
Iowa
Hawkeye State · I-80/35 · the Missouri to the Mississippi
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Iowa is the only state bounded by two navigable rivers, and it is flat, black-soiled and completely exposed. The August 2020 derecho crossed it in fourteen hours with 140-mph winds at Cedar Rapids and flattened a third of the state's corn — the costliest thunderstorm in United States history. The rest of the year Iowa gets the classic Midwest sequence: ice storms on the I-80 line in winter, spring severe from the Missouri Valley east, and a humid corn-sweat July that runs dewpoints into the 80s.
99
Counties
158
City Pages
I-80
Main Street
Iowa
iowa.forecastgreatplains.com

Every County

Services · 376 counties

Which region a county belongs to, and where its forecast lives.

Montana
56 counties
Beaverhead · Big Horn · Blaine · Broadwater · Carbon · Carter · Cascade · Chouteau · Custer · Daniels · Dawson · Deer Lodge · Fallon · Fergus · Flathead · Gallatin · Garfield · Glacier · Golden Valley · Granite · Hill · Jefferson · Judith Basin · Lake · Lewis and Clark · Liberty · Lincoln · Madison · McCone · Meagher · Mineral · Missoula · Musselshell · Park · Petroleum · Phillips · Pondera · Powder River · Powell · Prairie · Ravalli · Richland · Roosevelt · Rosebud · Sanders · Sheridan · Silver Bow · Stillwater · Sweet Grass · Teton · Toole · Treasure · Valley · Wheatland · Wibaux · Yellowstone
Wyoming
23 counties
Albany · Big Horn · Campbell · Carbon · Converse · Crook · Fremont · Goshen · Hot Springs · Johnson · Laramie · Lincoln · Natrona · Niobrara · Park · Platte · Sheridan · Sublette · Sweetwater · Teton · Uinta · Washakie · Weston
Nebraska
93 counties
Adams · Antelope · Arthur · Banner · Blaine · Boone · Box Butte · Boyd · Brown · Buffalo · Burt · Butler · Cass · Cedar · Chase · Cherry · Cheyenne · Clay · Colfax · Cuming · Custer · Dakota · Dawes · Dawson · Deuel · Dixon · Dodge · Douglas · Dundy · Fillmore · Franklin · Frontier · Furnas · Gage · Garden · Garfield · Gosper · Grant · Greeley · Hall · Hamilton · Harlan · Hayes · Hitchcock · Holt · Hooker · Howard · Jefferson · Johnson · Kearney · Keith · Keya Paha · Kimball · Knox · Lancaster · Lincoln · Logan · Loup · Madison · McPherson · Merrick · Morrill · Nance · Nemaha · Nuckolls · Otoe · Pawnee · Perkins · Phelps · Pierce · Platte · Polk · Red Willow · Richardson · Rock · Saline · Sarpy · Saunders · Scotts Bluff · Seward · Sheridan · Sherman · Sioux · Stanton · Thayer · Thomas · Thurston · Valley · Washington · Wayne · Webster · Wheeler · York
Kansas
105 counties
Allen · Anderson · Atchison · Barber · Barton · Bourbon · Brown · Butler · Chase · Chautauqua · Cherokee · Cheyenne · Clark · Clay · Cloud · Coffey · Comanche · Cowley · Crawford · Decatur · Dickinson · Doniphan · Douglas · Edwards · Elk · Ellis · Ellsworth · Finney · Ford · Franklin · Geary · Gove · Graham · Grant · Gray · Greeley · Greenwood · Hamilton · Harper · Harvey · Haskell · Hodgeman · Jackson · Jefferson · Jewell · Johnson · Kearny · Kingman · Kiowa · Labette · Lane · Leavenworth · Lincoln · Linn · Logan · Lyon · Marion · Marshall · McPherson · Meade · Miami · Mitchell · Montgomery · Morris · Morton · Nemaha · Neosho · Ness · Norton · Osage · Osborne · Ottawa · Pawnee · Phillips · Pottawatomie · Pratt · Rawlins · Reno · Republic · Rice · Riley · Rooks · Rush · Russell · Saline · Scott · Sedgwick · Seward · Shawnee · Sheridan · Sherman · Smith · Stafford · Stanton · Stevens · Sumner · Thomas · Trego · Wabaunsee · Wallace · Washington · Wichita · Wilson · Woodson · Wyandotte
Iowa
99 counties
Adair · Adams · Allamakee · Appanoose · Audubon · Benton · Black Hawk · Boone · Bremer · Buchanan · Buena Vista · Butler · Calhoun · Carroll · Cass · Cedar · Cerro Gordo · Cherokee · Chickasaw · Clarke · Clay · Clayton · Clinton · Crawford · Dallas · Davis · Decatur · Delaware · Des Moines · Dickinson · Dubuque · Emmet · Fayette · Floyd · Franklin · Fremont · Greene · Grundy · Guthrie · Hamilton · Hancock · Hardin · Harrison · Henry · Howard · Humboldt · Ida · Iowa · Jackson · Jasper · Jefferson · Johnson · Jones · Keokuk · Kossuth · Lee · Linn · Louisa · Lucas · Lyon · Madison · Mahaska · Marion · Marshall · Mills · Mitchell · Monona · Monroe · Montgomery · Muscatine · O'Brien · Osceola · Page · Palo Alto · Plymouth · Pocahontas · Polk · Pottawattamie · Poweshiek · Ringgold · Sac · Scott · Shelby · Sioux · Story · Tama · Taylor · Union · Van Buren · Wapello · Warren · Washington · Wayne · Webster · Winnebago · Winneshiek · Woodbury · Worth · Wright