!)Wall Of Rain Falls Apart!

3Pm Update: As expected convection is bubbling up towards the N and E of KC, associated with more instability and the MCV across the northern part of the area. There is also a small surface low up across N MO that is helping things out a bit as I detailed on the noon show. Again there is really no way this stuff can be figured out a day or two ahead of time. You just have to take it every few hours and run with it. For those of us who do forecasting it can be frustrating but it is what it is and we just have to deal with it.

There is a neat looking visible loop here, so check it out while you can so you can see what’s happening across our neck of the world.

The latest models are creating all sorts of storms/heavy rainfall in a broad swath of the area later tomorrow into tomorrow night. This would be associated with a weak cold front that will be pushing southwards out of the northern Rockies and heading this way later tomorrow afternoon. IF that front gets this far southwards, with the heat building ahead of it…85-90° and dewpoints in the 65° range and the cap not being to strong, we should get additional storm development. With all the water in the atmosphere, the storms certainly would produce a ton of rainfall, PW values off the NAM are in excess of 2″(!. PW stands for precipitable water…the higher the number the more moisture there is throughout the atmospheric column. So there is potential!

Whatever boundary pushes in will then either fall apart or retreat back towards the north later in the weekend. This will allow some pretty toasty air to move win with a LOT of wind for Monday. Wind gusts may be close to 40 MPH on Monday as highs soar into the 90-95° range.

Oh by the way…did you catch the roll cloud that moved through this AM. I posted a picture below, but here is a cool timelapse of it moving on through!

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Well it sure looked impressive on radar last evening and for awhile overnight, but towards about 10PM or so you could start seeing how this was going to conceivably miss us as the raging line of storms were starting to weaken to the NW and W of the metro. Then the northern part of the line stalled and the western part of the line kept sinking southwards into the better heat and moisture in the atmosphere. Heck I even watered for a few hours yesterday hoping that “reverse” psychology would help out the region. Sort of like washing the car when you think it’ll be dry for days on end. That didn’t really work either!

Here is a look where the rain fell last night and early this AM. There are still a few showers out there, associated with an MCV generated from the complex of storms last night. This image if from the NWS radar in Topeka.

Meanwhile farther northwards, it was a flat out gully washer for many in central and southeastern NE last night. Take a look at the same product from the NWS radar in Omaha.

Those are some 2-5″ rain totals up there!

The leftover clouds and turbulent atmosphere created some neat “roll clouds”. This picture was sent in from Scott earlier today.

So where do we go from here. This is what I have more confidence about. The rain chances will be diminishing later in the weekend into Wednesday of next week. So whatever we get, we’ll need to get through Sunday…as after that it gets hot, humid and dry.

There will be some lighter shower activity around through the middle of the day (spotty) associated with the MCV lurking in E KS. The activity may increase a bit later today as we heat up, but a tremendous amount of cirrus cloud cover may limit highs to the 82-87° range.

There is an outflow boundary also across eastern KS, actually the latest surface map is a chaotic mess right now. That outflow boundary needs to be watched for renewed activity as well later today. Should that activity get going in the middle of the afternoon, it should then move towards the E or NE. The latest model data shows some decent CAPE values out there later today so there should be decent instability in pockets. Another complex should develop out towards W KS later today and move towards the east. That should enhance our chances tomorrow for some rain, especially in the AM hours.

Everything that I talked about yesterday is still valid for the weekend forecast. We just have to take this day by day and hour by hour later today through tonight.

I’ll be updating the blog later today and tonight as weather developments warrant.

Joe