KANSAS CITY, Mo. — With about a week to go in the month, temperatures are running more than 2.5 degrees above average. This will likely be the fourth out of five months this year with monthly temperatures above average. So far, only March has trended below average.

From a precipitation standpoint, January through March were above average each month. April and (so far) May are below average. This data is for KCI, the official weather station for the KC metro area.

Today will feature a developing mid-to-late afternoon chance of some storms/showers bubbling up, which may continue to lurk in the region into the early evening. The same may occur again tomorrow, although that is still a bit questionable depending on what happens later today and this evening.

We’re just sort of in “nowheresville” to get a reliable and widespread rain chance locally. The bad news about that is the dryness that continues to expand is not likely to get significantly knocked down for awhile. The good news is right now the weekend looks fabulous at this point.

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Kansas City Forecast

Today: Sunny to partly cloudy skies with some showers/storms possible after about 4 p.m. The activity will be scattered around and what develops will migrate towards the west and northwest. Highs in the lower 80s.

Tonight: Showers/storms fade after 8 p.m. Then partly cloudy and pleasant with lows near 60 degrees.

Tomorrow: We may do it again with highs approaching 80 degrees.

Friday: Nicer and drier with highs in the upper 70s.

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Discussion:

So since I started with this, here is where we stand for the year so far through yesterday:

So its been mild, and while we started off moist, things as you know have dried out since that start. The rains are more sporadic and, to some extent, not widespread. That has created the dry areas that will be updated tomorrow when the drought report comes out.

Today’s rain situation is also sporadic. As temperatures warm up this afternoon into the lower 80s, the moisture in the lower part of the atmosphere will start to bubble up in the form of convective clouds. Those may well turn into passing showers and thunderstorms.

As some rain-cooled air is pushed out of those cells into the warmer surroundings, additional showers and storms may form the main cells that start to die off. This coverage will be hap-hazard in the region I think at this point. A well-placed, rain-cooled outflow could get parts of the metro some additional rains as the sunsets this activity should wane.

Tomorrow we’ll focus on a “backdoor” cold front that will be coming in from the east and pushing towards the west. This will bring in drier air (lower dew points) into the region by Friday. That backdoor front is towards the Great Lakes this morning.

What happens with these fronts is that as high pressure builds down through Michigan (and it’s a rather strong late May high pressure area) it forces the cooler and drier air farther west. While not typical for us, it can happen from time to time.

The good news is that this will likely send dew points crashing downwards. Take a look at dew points later today in the upper 50s (still not bad really comfort-wise).

Now the dew points later on Friday.

So the air will be dry. This will allow temperatures to warm up well into the 70s during the day, but start to drop off nicely at night with the drier air in place, sort of like what happens in the deserts. This drier air will continue into the weekend as well with moderating temperatures bringing milder days and yet still comfortable nights.

Dew points may be inching back up heading towards Memorial Day itself.

Odds are this will be a dry period as well, from Friday onwards. The only thing that I may watch is what happens in the western and central Plains region as various disturbances may be generated by thunderstorms out there. The flow in the atmosphere is so weak and nondescript really that there won’t be anything that can push these things along. But various little swirls may get generated and sort of wallow around out there. If something breaks loose and migrates east, it could alter a dry weekend forecast. The odds of that appear to be very low locally at this point.

The severe weather threats continue to be minimal to non-existent locally for quite sometime. Just sort of strong really.

For tornado reports so far this year, look at Missouri and central and eastern Kansas:

While it looks like there were a ton of wind and hail reports, so far most of those reports locally have been near-quarter-sized hailstones. Northern Missouri had their big stuff a few Saturdays ago, northeast Kansas had some tornadoes a couple of weeks ago, and here we stand in the metro, not a lot happening.

That makes me happy, maybe not the roofers but it’s one less big headache from a coverage standpoint. I’m sure we’ll have our opportunities in June, but the flow pattern in the big picture for the coming appears to be weak. In other words, with the winds above us not doing a whole lot in terms of moving air from place to place, it will be tough to get anything too significant to form that can be anything too dramatic. It doesn’t mean there totally won’t be severe weather risks, but anything overly concerning right now isn’t on the table for awhile.

The feature photo comes from Sheila Jackson.

Joe