Kansas City weather: Rain chances in this week's forecast

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s been a struggle for rain for the metro and last week it looked somewhat promising for the region to get some decent rainfall.

Sadly though, while last night brought some rain for some in KC (especially on the north side), the south side missed most of the rain. I I don’t think I got a drop at my house, and when I was mowing yesterday afternoon, I did notice that the grass is starting to show some signs of stress in early May.

That’s not right. When driving around yesterday, there are definite signs of grass stress in the medians where the grass is dependent on rain. Again, unusual for early May.

There will be a few more opportunities this week with perhaps the best chance on Thursday. It’s starting to become more and more critical heading into the middle of the month for us to get this rain that seemingly eludes most of the area each time.

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Kansas City Forecast

Today: Decreasing clouds with mostly sunny conditions for awhile. Warm with highs in the lower to mid-80s. There may be some scattered storms south of KC later this afternoon.

Tonight: Fair and pleasant with lows in the 50s.

Tomorrow: Partly cloudy and mild with highs in the lower 80s.

Wednesday: A chance of some morning showers then clouds. Highs may only be in the 70s.

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Discussion:

It’s no secret that the rains have been lacking. Over the weekend, northern Missouri got hammered by heavy thunderstorms with large hail. The hail was the size of grapefruits up there, some of the largest hail Missouri has seen in years. There were also three tornadoes (so far) up there, including an EF-0 in Trenton with some damage to the downtown area, and two tornadoes in Linn County, including an EF-2 tornado.

Heavy rains also feel up there as well. It was quite the Saturday with some strong supercells roaming through northern Missouri. Last night, there were strong cells as well with some gusty winds as the main issue up there too.

So while we don’t want the severe aspect of things, we certainly would’ve liked the rainfall to a large extent.

Here are some of the 24 hour rain totals via Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network:

Meanwhile, some of the two-day totals from Saturday through last night taking into account the strong storms in northern Missouri show this:

There are shades of 2022 here. Remember what happened then?

The north side was greener than the south side, which saw drought conditions develop and gradually expand northwards into the summer months.

This is the rain deficits from May through July in 2022. The north side was okay, but the south side really dried out.

This in turn then sent the temperatures up higher on the south side of the metro. Johnson County, Kansas, and others south of Interstate 70 saw numerous 90-100-plus days start adding up in June and July as the soil was really baked out. The north side remained green and lush into the middle of the summer months.

Last night, I wasn’t overly hopeful for rain in Kansas City as a whole, but the storms did make it to parts of the area and split up as they came towards the State Line region. That’s why some had at least something, while many had nothing more than a few drops, if that at all.

This week, the best chance may actually be towards Thursday and maybe Friday. The data is grabbing hold of a disturbance in Texas that will be coming north on Thursday. When combined with the heat and moisture in the region, it should help to create a decent area of rain coming up from the south. As this happens, another disturbance will be coming through the western U.S. and moving into the Rockies. That disturbance is shown below:

That should move into the southwest U.S. on Wednesday and into the Rockies on Thursday. It should create bigger storms out towards the western Plains and Colorado later in the week and the Storm Prediction Center is watching that area for the potential of severe weather.

This is for Thursday. Right now, there is a question about how much instability will be around for this to come together.

For us, we’ll have instability around on Friday, but there may not be a lot to trigger it off to realize bigger storms. This will be fleshed out towards the middle of the week.

We’ll probably be hoping Thursday comes through. I don’t like the setup towards the weekend and early next week with rain/storm chances. On the plus side, this means a continued lack of severe storms, but on the negative side, it means a lack of rain-producing thunderstorms.

These maps aren’t too thrilling to see. This is the forecasted rain deficits for the 10-day period ending at 7 a.m. on the 22nd off the EURO:

Not good and the GFS ensembles aren’t that far away from this either.

It doesn’t mean it will be totally dry, but in a region where we’re behind as is, being behind again towards the third week of May isn’t great.

As some may know, we’re in the process of transitioning into El Nino conditions in the Pacific. For the last three years, we’ve had La Nina conditions, which ended a few months ago. We’re making a hard and fast switch now to moderate-to-potentially-strong El Nino conditions down there that will carry us into the winter months. I’m curious to research if this transition, so fast and strong, influences the Plains moisture situation as the transition occurs.