Strong winds that followed a rainstorm Monday afternoon peaked at about 77 miles per hour in parts of Milwaukee, according to the National Weather Service of southeastern Wisconsin.
The winds resulted in downed trees and power lines, leaving more than 46,000 We Energies customers without power at one point. The Milwaukee Department of Public Works received nearly one hundred emergency calls for downed trees and branches.
WUWM spoke with Aidan Kuroski, meteorologist with the National Weather Service of southeastern Wisconsin about the damage and disruption to neighborhoods across the city. They talked late Monday afternoon.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maayan Silver: What happened Monday to cause all these strong winds?
Aidan Kuroski: Generally, when this happens, it's trailing usually either a squall line [a strong line of thunderstorms] or a decaying area of thunderstorms, usually on the back edge of these thunderstorms. And what this is called is a wake low. It's a small, intense area of low pressure that forms basically right on the backside [of a storm]. And that can bring stronger end wind gusts across a large swath of area. In fact, Michigan right now is issuing warnings because of these strong winds on the back of these showers.
So, we had the strong line of thunderstorms and on the back end was this high wind. Is this much wind damage common for the area?
And why did it happen in southern Wisconsin? And why doesn't it usually happen?
It's tough for these scenarios to unravel and develop the way that we saw that today. And it's also difficult to know exactly why southern Wisconsin was specifically hit with these winds. As far as we can tell, based on looking at various observations and such, we've kind of found that it was probably some localized downbursts [a localized area of strong wind that comes from showers or storms] as well that helped locally enhance the winds in that area.
Is the fact that we're so close to Lake Michigan, is that usually kind of protecting us from things like this?
In this particular scenario, no, these wake low situations are not predicated on how close to the lake you are or anything like that. It's usually on the backside of a storm system or backside of a decaying thunderstorm system. And usually this can occur basically anywhere and it's not really particularly associated or not associated with areas near the lake.
Why did it happen?
It's tough to know exactly why specifically Milwaukee was hit and not anywhere else. I would say that this is not uncommon with wake low situations. They can be very, very difficult to forecast, very difficult to know before it happens. We had some statements out ahead of time that suggested that strong winds were possible. But this level of wind that we saw in Milwaukee was not expected.
Do you have any idea when the last time was that something like Monday's strong winds hit Milwaukee?
I don't know exactly when the last time we had winds that strong. I mean we had the storms a couple weeks ago that did roll through and probably bring winds at times close to that. We didn't measure anything close to what we did at the airport. We measured 77 miles per hour.
Seventy-seven miles per hour and there wasn't anything close to that in the intense storms a few weeks ago or in August of 2025 in the Milwaukee area?
As far as I know, no. We have had these way close situations happen before. And it is sometimes a lot like this, where most of the area, most of southern Wisconsin, sees anywhere from 40 to 55 miles per hour. But then you might get a pocket or a small area that ends up seeing closer to 60, 65. Now, 77, that's definitely on the higher end what we could expect from these.
People in southeastern Wisconsin, as in other parts of Wisconsin, have a little bit of shell shock lately given the weather incidents that we've been dealing with. Is this something like what happened today, the winds, and what happened a week ago? Are we seeing these types of incidents happen more frequently? Can you attribute it to climate change or to anything else?
Is there anything people should know heading into the more tornado-y storm season of June and July that you want people to know about?
Nothing specifically, but we always want people to be paying attention to the weather because I know even sometimes I can go a couple days without thinking about the weather if I'm not working and all of a sudden I realize, ‘oh, we're getting thunderstorms today.’ And we should really pay attention to these types of days where there's always potential for some storms and if there's some storms we can always get situations like this with a wake low or those thunderstorms could become stronger than even we expect. So it's important to always stay up to date with the forecast and watching out for what's going on.
When winds are that high and strong, do you recommend that people not be outdoors, that they not be in cars, things like that?
Certainly, those winds can be dangerous. Especially when there's trees around, especially if you're going hiking or something like that, that would be certainly a dangerous time or place to be.
