March brings an active start to severe weather season

While much of Northwest Missouri and Northeast Kansas has been spared of impactful severe weather so far this month, the nearby Kansas City metro has already taken a beating from monster hailstones and recorded a small EF-0 tornado. 

One could say March came in like a lion when it comes to severe weather across much of the Midwestern United States as a whole. According to preliminary National Weather Service reports, at least 35 tornadoes have struck U.S. soil since March 1st. A handful of these twisters were considered strong, receiving an EF-3 rating with maximum wind speeds of 136 to 165 mph. Tragically, these were also killer tornadoes resulting in 8 of the 10 total tornado deaths so far this month.

The first tornado outbreak of March 2026 occurred from the 5th to the 7th, spawning tornadoes from the Southern Plains to the Great Lakes. An EF-2 tornado turned deadly in rural Northwest Oklahoma taking two lives after sunset on March 5th. The following day an EF-3 tornado in Southwest Michigan plowed through neighborhoods along an ice-covered lake with maximum winds of 160 mph, resulting in three fatalities. Later that night, another EF-3 tornado struck Beggs Oklahoma, just south of Tulsa, taking two more lives.

A small EF-0 tornado also struck parts of the Kansas City metro in the final hour of March 6th, damaging mainly trees and powerlines in its narrow path with no reported injuries.

This week, a second severe weather outbreak affected similar regions on March 10th. One supercell thunderstorm spawned multiple tornadoes, including an EF-3 twister in parts of Northern Illinois and Indiana, resulting in two fatalities. The same storm produced a state record hailstone for Illinois, measuring 6 inches in diameter, about the size of a large grapefruit.

March 10th also brought severe weather closer to home, when a batch of supercell thunderstorms blew up over the northwest suburbs of Kansas City, dropping massive hailstones. The biggest hail was baseball to softball sized, ranging from 2.75 inches to 4 inches in diameter from Parkville to Platte Woods in southern Platte County. Parts of Wyandotte, Clay, and Jackson counties also received sizable hail Tuesday evening.