Mid-April Mayhem 2026 | Storm, EAS, & Siren Mega Compilation

The period from April 13th through April 17th, 2026 featured one of the most active stretches of severe weather I have ever been through. It seemed nearly the entire Midwest region was under the gun for tornadoes, HUGE hail, destructive winds, and flash flooding during that time. This is just some of the weather I experienced, locally. The weeks leading up to this were also active, but mostly in the form of rain and relatively benign thunderstorms. They greatly increased in frequency and severity by mid-April. The first wave of severe weather featured in this video was from a midnight MCS that sagged southeastward into southern Wisconsin. It arrived at my house around 12:30 AM. While initially expecting just straight-line winds, it suddenly went tornado warned shortly before hitting. The winds certainly gusted to at least 70 MPH, if not more in some areas. It caused considerable wind damage locally, knocking out power to tens of thousands in the Madison metro, downing trees, and snapping power poles. Later that afternoon, increasing heat and instability led to the development of another round of intense thunderstorms. These hit my area around the afternoon rush hour. These storms caused extreme hail damage to the metro area. Hail up to three inches in diameter fell in northeastern Madison. My home saw up to ping pong ball sized hail, so I appear to have been lucky. One of the supercells also went tornado warned, looking almost textbook like. I was very concerned a large tornado was about to happen, but fortunately it did not produce. Yet another wave of storms followed the rush hour round by a couple hours or so. It was at that time ‪@lightningbolt99999‬ came over to my house to film EAS alerts with me. We also were spotting the storms from my garage. Fortunately, these storms were much more tame due to the earlier storms consuming much of the available instability. I did not capture footage on April 15th, other than a flood watch that was re-issued. We did get storms producing heavy rainfall, but managed to avoid most of the severe weather that day. It was very close, as some counties near the WI/IL border saw tornado touchdowns that evening. April 17th brought another round of severe weather to the area, striking near and just after the rush hour. Some areas of the metro saw large hail again, but the main hazard came from tornadoes this time. Multiple did touch down, but fortunately missing the metro area. Sirens activated five times at my house during this stretch. This has only happened one other time, which was back on May 21, 2024 when hybrid linear/supercell storms basically trained over the area for almost two hours, causing widespread damage. I hope you all enjoy the video! Please feel free to use the chapters below to skip around as you please. CHAPTERS 0:00- Intro 1:10- A couple alerts on April 13th 4:17- Midnight MCS, Tornado Warning, Siren Activation 1, & Destructive Winds 9:08- EAS Tornado Watch on April 14th 11:26- Supercell storm approaches 15:33- Destructive SVR, Tornado Warning, Siren Activation 2, & Hailstorm 21:02- Siren Activation 3 24:10- Looking at hailstones in the yard 25:20- Evening Storm Watch & EAS Captures (ft. ‪@lightningbolt99999‬ !) 44:50- Double Rainbow Appears! 56:12- Flood Watch on April 15th 57:41- Intro to April 17th Outbreak 59:28- EAS Captures on April 17th & Storm Spotting 1:29:57- Another Tornado Warning, Siren Activation 4 1:38:34- Siren Activation 5