KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s nice to be back from vacation after about 10 days off. Started working again yesterday with quiet weather in the region, which is always nice to come back to. We were on a cruise in the Caribbean with delightful weather and mostly calm seas.

Now that I’m back, the weather is sort of calm, but not calm. There are rain chances around, but nothing overly concrete. If it does rain, it may not be much which seems like a bit of a theme for the region over the coming days. The overall temperatures aren’t too warm, if anything, a trend towards cooler weather again later in the weekend into early next week.

The NFL Draft celebration should be mostly OK, but again there may be a few opportunities of some rain drops both tomorrow and Friday night.

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Kansas City Forecast:

Today: Sunny this morning then partly cloudy this afternoon with highs into the upper 60s.

Tonight: Variable clouds and cool with lows in the upper 40s.

Tomorrow: Lots of clouds with perhaps a few showers mainly on the south side of the metro, perhaps south of Interstate 70 or US 50. Highs in the mid-to-upper 60s.

Friday: Partly cloudy with a chance of some evening showers. Highs in the mid-to-upper 60s.

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Discussion:

The good news about the way things are playing out regarding the seasonable to coolish weather and the NFL Draft coming into town is that the chances of thunderstorms over the coming few days looks to be remote. That was a concern with the buildup to the Draft in KC, a mainly outdoor event where tens of thousands of folks will be in a vulnerable situation outside and without much in the way of shelter. If a line of strong storms with lots of lightning were coming into the region during the critical hours, that could be (and is) a recipe for something very bad to happen.

Right now, it appears we’re going to be spared from that risk.

The pattern as mentioned overall is a cool one for us. Temperatures for this time of the year average into the upper 60s to near-70 degrees. We should be around that region into Saturday before a chillier airmass comes into the region on Sunday that may linger into early next week before moderating later in the week. The overall trends from the EURO show this rough idea:

You can see the cooldown and then the moderation

With this cool air regime taking over, this will eliminate our severe weather risks for quite some time. This next chart shows the CAPE. It’s a measure of instability in the atmosphere that we look at, especially in the spring months, to identify if instability will be around to potentially fuel thunderstorms if other factors come into play, and well not so much.

Look at the bottom portion. CAPES above 500 or so start to attract some attention.

Instability tends to rebuild towards the end of next week.

So that is item No. 1.

Item No. 2 are the rain chances for the region, which are still sort of on the edge for the KC metro area. The next couple of days will actually feature better rains over on the Kansas side towards the central and western parts of the state and also south of KC to some extent. This is great news because of the ongoing drought (and it’s nasty out there).

Take a look via the Kansas Mesonet of the rain over the past couple of days through yesterday.

And since midnight today:

Southwest Kansas really coming up big on this one, and this is why this moisture is so important.

That darkest RED area is bad news out there. That is “exceptional” drought. The worst of the worst when it comes to drought conditions. Roughly 44% of the state is under that criteria.

Notice how the drought doesn’t get into east central or northeast Kansas. We’re in good shape for now. We’ve had over 10 inches of precipitation this year, our 25th wettest start to a year in KC (at KCI). So we’re doing OK.

Now with the overall pattern bringing very light totals for about a week, we’ll need some moisture towards the end of next week. During this time of the year, the soils dry out quickly with the growing flora. The top soil especially will be needing a drink pretty soon.

Will it rain during the NFL Draft?

The overall rain chances tomorrow aren’t that great. The only model that is sort of giving the area some rain is the GFS, which tends to be too moist in most setups. The other models are generally dry and the new NAM coming out this morning is dry as well for tomorrow. I’m not too excited about the prospects for rain in the immediate area.

There is an actual storm on the map too causing all this out west. You can see it down into northeast New Mexico.

That system will be moving towards the east mostly and is easily trackable when we go up into the middle part of the atmosphere. Here is the NAM model showing the course of this one and then the next disturbance that is coming down into the western Plains that will also generally pass towards the south of the area.

Today’s run of the NAM model.

You can see the better scenario for rain tied to the two waves are mostly south and west of the region. This brings the rain totals higher out there than up here.

We barely get into something perhaps later Friday connected to the second disturbance.

The result of these waves passing south of us keeps us in a more easterly flow of air. For now that’s a dry flow. The atmosphere will moisten up somewhat tomorrow and Friday evening. If there could be a little disturbance rotating around the main systems and that disturbance came up towards the metro, maybe there could be a few showers out there, especially tomorrow somewhere around the region.

After a nice Saturday, a decent for late April cold front will come through dropping temperatures into early next week. It’s going to snow again up towards the Great Lakes.

OK that will do it for today. Nice to be back.

The feature photo is from Chad Harra down towards Buckner, Missouri.

Joe