KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Well yesterday was a fascinating day in the temperature world around the KC metro. A warm front nudged up into the metro, but stalled just south of downtown KC. To the north of that, front temperatures were in the 50s. To the south, temperatures were into the 70s with some 80s in a couple of counties south of KC. Quite the day for sure.

That same warm front then switched to a cold front as it started to sag southwards. It also got a helping hand from a stronger push of cooler air overnight. This morning we’re waking up to temperatures in the mid-to-upper 30s. And once again today, the colder air will win the fight and temperatures should really struggle all day long. This time all of the area will be in the chillier air. This March has been wild and wooly… and definitely on the wooly side.

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Kansas City Forecast:

Today: Clouds and perhaps a few areas of mist at times. Chilly with highs in the lower 40s this afternoon.

Tonight: Cloudy with lows in the mid-to-upper 30s.

Tomorrow: Scattered showers possible at times. It won’t rain all day but there will be rain around. Chilly again with highs in the upper 40s.

Saturday: Nicer with highs in the mid-to-upper 50s.

Sunday: Showers possible, especially during the morning. Highs in the 50s.

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Discussion:

This will likely go down as a cooler-than-average month around the region as no prolonged switch to springtime temperatures is likely any time soon. Basically, it appears that we get a couple of days of mild weather before we see a return to cooler conditions.

Temperatures this month are running about 2.5 degrees below average at KCI. Today the average high is 58 degrees. The actual high today is 50 degrees. That was set at 1 a.m. overnight before the secondary push of cooler air moved into the region overnight. Temperatures dropped between 4-5 a.m. and will be on the struggle bus to recover today with all the clouds in the region.

The 8 a.m. map shows the front itself down towards the Ozarks. It’s more or less a stationary front really. To the south of the front, the warm and humid air is sitting there. Dew points (the numbers in green) are near 70 degrees. That’s pretty tropical air down there. The red numbers are the temperatures and they are in the 20s and 30s north of the front, which is where we are.

That front will be a trigger for severe weather today.

And tomorrow as well.

This is a favored area for severe storms during this time of the year.

Last night, there were a couple of stronger storms that developed towards central Missouri, although I’m not aware of any hail reports from those storms.

Weather around the U.S.

Today’s concern is hail in the slight risk region to the southeast of us. Tomorrow, the concern is more tornadic.

That hatched area indicated at least a 10% chance of an EF-2 or higher-rated tornado to affect someplace within 25 miles of a point in the hatched region. It may sound like a small chance, but in reality it’s a good indicator of some confidence that some big tornados may occur down there.

Speaking of which… there was this yesterday: A tornado in California.

This happened on the east side of LA.

Here is a closer view. There might be some not-safe-for-work language in this.

The National Weather Service went out an surveyed the damage and determined that it was an EF-1 tornado.

It was on the ground for three minutes.

It was the strongest March tornado to affect the LA area since 1983.

Tornadoes do happen there, but they are unusual. There was an EF-0 tornado the day before as well.

All told in the Tornado Archive database, there are over 450 tornados in the files in the entire state going back decades and decades.

Switching gears, as we know locally the drought has ended for now in our region. As a matter of fact, flooding rains are possible down towards the Interstate 44 corridor over the next couple of days with that front down there.

On the Kansas side though (mainly southern and western Kansas), things are grim. The latest drought monitor came out and it looks like this on the Kansas side:

You can see the swath of “extreme” to “exceptional” drought out there. Fifty-two percent of the state is under those two categories. That is now good and the crops may likely fail.

There’s this as well:

Meade County is south of the Dodge City area on the Oklahoma panhandle border.

The longer-range data for the next couple of weeks isn’t too encouraging for that region. A little something, but not a lot.

This goes through the first week of April.

Meanwhile as our winter draws to a close, the overall trend obviously this winter has been mild. There is a scoring system called the Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index (AWSSI) that measures the severity of the winter seasons.

The red dots are considered mild.
For reference, last year was considered moderate. The 2009-10 and 2010-11 winters were considered “extreme,” AKA the good ole days.

The feature photo is from Lara Bee.

Joe