Drought Spreads & Worsens
Not surprisingly, when the latest drought report came out conditions worsened slightly across MO/KS and when next weeks report comes out, in light of the forecast for the next 5-10 days, the report may worsen yet again.
On the MO side the moderate drought expanded to encompass another 2% of the state. The severe drought levels expanded another 4% across the state and the extreme drought level held pretty steady. Here is the latest map to go along with those figures.
On the KS side…there wasn’t much change, although the moderate drought did expand another 2% in coverage.
To put harder numbers on those colors, for the KC metro (officially @ KCI) we’re running 10.7″ short on rainfall since April 1st! The numbers for Downtown KC aren’t any better. Close to 10.6″ below average. Nationally the drought is affecting 80% of the US…which is the most in 12 years!
What is so interesting to me is how the weather is so varied from year to year. check out how wet/dry parts of the country were last year heading towards July.
In 2011 MO had it’s 15th wettest spring season…while KS saw it’s 28th driest spring season (April-June). Now look at 2012…
Now look at MO…7th driest in weather history while KS was the 12th driest. AR was actually the driest in their weather history which is very impressive to me. Interestingly, ME, FL, and MN had their 3rd wettest spring in their history.
The good news is that there are actually a few t/showers that are developing out there. They’re not moving much and will tend to fall apart in about 30 minutes but maybe a few of you will at least get the dust knocked down a bit. There is actually a marginally better chance of some storm activity on Friday as a weak disturbance comes into play from the northern part of the country drops our way. The atmosphere will not be capped so with another day near 95° or so and a disturbance coming on through, the potential is there for a bit more activity out there tomorrow afternoon.
The bigger picture still concerns the renewed building of another heatwave that will encompass much of the middle part of the country over the next 5-10 days or so. While perhaps NOT to the extreme of what happened earlier in the month (105-109° in the metro)…I could see a run of 100-105° temperatures in the area which is still plenty hot and will worsen the drought situation. Heck today KCI hit 95° and Downtown hit 98°.
Finally a big hello and thank you to Cylithria one of our frequent weather blog readers. She sent me a very kind email about how much she enjoys reading the blog. So Cylithria thanks for the kind words and thoughts.
Stay cool and hope that one of these renegade storms hits your yard with some much needed rainfall.
Joe
Joe
