Good morning.

I'm Cedric and This is your EM Morning Brief for April 1, 2026 severe thunderstorm activity is pushing through a broad corridor from the mid Mississippi Valley, across the Ohio Valley and into the southern Great Lakes today.

NOAA's Storm Prediction center carried a slight risk of severe thunderstorms for March 31st with damaging wind gusts and large hail as the primary threats and a low end tornado potential where where convective clusters take on a more cellular structure.

Severe thunderstorm warnings were active during the day across portions of Iowa, Kansas and Illinois.

The threat complex is forecast to persist through the week and into the weekend as an amplified upper level wave traverses the country with a second significant round possible for the southern plains.

Governor Greg Abbott on 3-31-20 directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to pre position state emergency response resources ahead of multiple rounds of severe storms targeting north west and Central Texas.

Pre staged assets include Texas A and M Task Force rescue teams, the State Incident Management Team, Texas Department of Transportation personnel and Parks and Wildlife rescue boats.

The primary hazards are large hail, damaging wind gusts, flash flooding and isolated tornadoes with conditions expected to remain elevated into next week.

The National Interagency Fire Center's March 31st situation report shows 51 large uncontained fires burning nationwide with 2,331 personnel committed to incidents.

The National Fire Preparedness level stands at PL2, raised on March 20.

NIFC has two active fuels and fire behavior advisories, one for the Northern and central Great Plains where historically dry fuels are driving extreme rates of spread not typical for this time of year, and a second for the central and southern Great Plains where above normal to exceptional grass loads are widespread.

Western North Carolina is under a statewide burn ban effective March 28, open ended as crews battle multiple active wildfires totaling nearly 1,000 acres, many of them fueled by prolonged drought and heavy debris left by Hurricane Helene.

The Jumping Branch Fire in McDowell county is the largest at 185 acres and 20% contained, with 20 homes under voluntary evacuation and one storage structure destroyed.

On the cybersecurity front, CISA added CVE2026 3055A critical Citrix Netscaler out of bounds memory read flaw CIS CVSS 9.3 affecting Netscaler, ADC and Gateway when configured as a SAML identity provider to its known Exploited vulnerabilities catalog on March 30th 31st.

Active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed with researchers tracking reconnaissance activity against roughly 30,000 exposed appliances online.

Federal civilian executive branch agencies must apply citrix's patch by April 2.

Separately, CISA published two ICS advisories on March 31.

ICSA 260901 covers an authentication bypass design flaw in the Enritsu Remote Spectrum monitor that allows unauthorized access to operational settings and sensitive signal data.

ICSA 2609002 addresses PX4 autopilot's Mavlink interface, which does not require cryptographic authentication by default, enabling unauthenticated arbitrary command execution.

Let's run through the States USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory issued its March 31 update keeping Kilauea's alert level at watch with an aviation color code of orange.

The summit eruption is in an eruptive pause between fountain episodes with SO2 emissions in the 1,000 to 5,000 tons per day range and visible glow from the vents.

HVO models project episode 44 fountaining to begin between April 6 and April 14.

All activity remains confined to Halemaumau Crater within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

Illinois Severe thunderstorm warnings were issued March 31 for northeastern DeWitt county and other locations with damaging wind gusts the primary threat as part of the broader Midwest convective episode.

Iowa A severe thunderstorm warning was issued March 31 for areas around Fredonia and Columbus Junction Moving east at 35 mph with ping pong ball size hail reported.

Kansas Severe thunderstorm warnings were issued March 31 for southeastern Kansas near Walnut and Erie with 60 mph wind gusts and quarter size hail reported.

North Carolina the NC Forest Service's statewide burn ban issued March 28 and open ended remains in effect across all 100 counties amid extreme drought and elevated fire weather.

Multiple wildfires are active across western North Carolina totaling approximately 1000 acres with difficult access complicated by Post Helene debris.

The Jumping branch Fire in McDowell County, Buck Creek area northwest of Marion is the largest active incident 185 acres, 20% contained as of March 31, with 20 homes under voluntary evacuation and one storage structure damaged along NC 80.

A Marion woman, Hilary Brooke Inman, 38, was charged on March 31 with improperly discarding smoking material that caused the fire.

Oklahoma High fire danger and red flag warnings remain in place across western Oklahoma where multiple large fires continue to burn.

The Jumping Juniper fire in Dewey county near Camargo and the Dibble Creek fire in McLean county, for which FEMA issued fire management assistance declarations on March 22 remain part of the broader complex of fires driving the PL2 preparedness level nationwide.

South Carolina Dorchester County Water and Sewer issued a planned boil water advisory beginning March 31 at 10pm for customers near I95 and Highway 178 associated with a scheduled contractor water service outage of approximately eight hours.

Texas Governor Abbott on March 31st directed TDM to activate and pre position state emergency response resources ahead of multiple rounds of severe storms targeting north west and Central Texas.

The threat includes large hail, damaging wind gusts, flash flooding potential and possible tornadoes, with conditions expected to evolve through at least next week.

Pre staged assets include Texas A and M Task Force, rescue teams, the State incident management team, TxDOT personnel, and parks and wildlife rescue boats.

Texans are urged to monitor local NWS forecasts closely.

All other states have no significant updates in the last 24 hours.

That's your EM morning brief for Wednesday, April 1, 2026.

Stay safe.