A beautiful start to the day in the region as drier air has worked in from the east and with easterly winds today bringing in lower dew points you should “feel” the difference despite the temperatures being warmer today.

The weekend though won’t be quite as nice. There will be periods of showers/storms although there will be noticeable breaks in the rains as well to do some things outdoors so as I’ve mentioned for the last few days, despite the high rain risk, it won’t be raining all day either weekend day.

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One sentence forecast: Periods of showers and storms over the weekend with big dry intervals and seasonable temperatures.

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Forecast:

Today: Mostly sunny and pleasant with highs in the lower 80s

Tonight: Fair to partly cloudy with lows in the lower 60s

Tomorrow: Showers/storms possible in the morning. Then there should be breaks in the rain into the early evening. Warm with highs in the lower 80s

Sunday: Showers/storms possible in the morning then drier in the afternoon with highs in the upper 70s

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Discussion:

I thought I’d start the blog with a recap of May in terms of severe weather. As I’ve mentioned numerous times this has been a severe weather season that has been a weird one in the Plains (again). Certainly locally, once again we’ve avoided events of significance. Really many areas of the Plains have (in general) not had a big season.

I saw some information yesterday regarding this past month of May…putting this into context even more via the SPC.

Here are some of the weirder ones…

May 2023 Month-In-Review:
Highlights:
4th Consecutive May w/o a violent tornado
2nd May w/o a EF3+ tornado
2nd May with no Moderate or High Risk
Fewest Preliminary Severe Weather Reports (since 2004)
2nd Fewest Watches/3rd Fewest Tornado Watches

And that was just in May — typically the biggest part of severe weather season. June can also be a big month, even locally. Yet here we are…whether it be nationwide or locally, so far so good for the most part. So far there have been 22 reports of tornadoes nationwide through the 1st 8 days of June.

Why? Well for the Plains the issue, and it’s been going on for quite some time is the lack of real wind flow and shear for a variety of different patterns that have set up over the last 5-6 weeks or so. There has been a day here and there but really it’s been settled (not that I’m complaining at all about this).

While the temperatures have trended warmer overall…for various reasons we just haven’t been set-up for things. Northern MO has their event a few weeks ago…since then though aside from a random severe storm warning here or there we’ve been fortunate.

Overall the tornado report count is up to 817…a bunch of those will get whittled away after the duplicate reports are removed. We had an active January and March but April and May have been “quiet” in the scheme of things.

Kansas has had 24 reports of tornadoes and MO has had 18. Those numbers should be roughly tripled by about now. Heck OK has had about 35 reports…that number is really low for them.

I’m not so convinced I see any great set-ups locally for the next 1-2 weeks either. Remarkable and again no complaints. Not to say there can’t be any severe weather at all…but the large scale outbreaks that we are always concerned about during this time of the year just don’t seem to be there right now for our immediate region.

Next up is the weekend forecast and again there will be some dry times in there. Storm chances appear highest tomorrow morning, tomorrow night and Sunday morning. If things move along, the afternoons should be doable. Sunday appears to be the cooler day compared to tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning is opportunity #1 as a low level jet stream blows over a front that will be off to the west of here (our drier air front that moved in overnight with the more comfortable air mass). That jet stream, while not overly strong, should provide enough lift to get activity going for the morning hours. This may linger in parts of the area through the late morning.

The trick about getting the dry weather in the afternoon is whether or not that cluster of storms throws out an outflow that then gets overridden with that same low level jet stream. Assuming that isn’t that significant…we should be in OK shape for most of the afternoon.

Then tomorrow night a disturbance comes down from Nebraska and that may trigger storms/rain to the north that migrate towards the southeast. There might be some instability building up later tomorrow IF we can get into the lower to maybe middle 80s up north…so some of those storms may have some bite to them as they come down towards the Metro.

That risk will end early Sunday morning and a front will be moving through as well early Sunday. That will usher in cooler air and Sunday may be a struggle to warm up.

So overall it’s not a bad weekend just one that we have to watch for occasional showers and storms around.

The feature photo comes from Peggy Jane farmer…she mentions “Definitely a drought, 7 mi N of Meadville, June used to bring floods.”

Joe