KANSAS CITY, Mo. — That was an impressive storm that brought brief heavy rains, quite a bit of wind (still going), and severe weather to a few areas around the region. The storms never quite tapped into the strongest winds above the surface overnight, although there is a report out east of the metro of 70-75 mph winds. Locally, perhaps some near-60 mph gusts.
The strong winds associated with the strength of the storm system, now in southeast Iowa are still cranking out 50 mph gusts in the region though. These winds will gradually slow down later today with hopefully sunshine coming towards the area before lunch.
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Kansas City Forecast:
Today: Turning sunny, blustery and remaining mild. Temperatures recovering from around 50 this morning to near 60 degrees this afternoon. Winds will continue to gust to over 30 mph for awhile.
Tonight: Fair skies and cooler with lows near 30 degrees.
Tomorrow: Sunny and milder with highs near 65 degrees.
Wednesday: Partly cloudy and warm again with highs near 60 degrees. Perhaps warmer.
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Discussion:
Well it was an intense storm, the strongest one we’ve seen in years from an air pressure standpoint I think.
The pressure bottomed out at 29.01″ up at KCI. That is really low, even for our area, perhaps in the top 20 of lowest air pressure reports on record. The record by the way is 28.82″ set back in 1960. So we got to within 2/10″ of being the lowest air pressure on our history books.
Very impressive.
The severe weather aspect of the storm was pronounced more towards the southern Plains where strong winds and several tornadoes were reported.
The following graphic shows the reports. A “W” indicates stronger wind reports.
The red “T” are tornado reports.
There may be a few other reports of winds up closer to the region though to add to that map. There is a report in Jefferson County that is being looked into this morning by Emergency Management.
Rain amounts up at KCI were close to 1/2 inch or so. That seems more or less representative for the metro 1/4 to 3/4 of an inch. Amounts were heavier towards northeast Kansas and northwest Missouri, where totals were in the 1-2 inches range from Topeka, Kansas, to near St. Joseph towards Maryville, Missouri.
No tornado warnings were issued locally. Numerous Severe Thunderstorm Warnings were though.
Tornadoes touched down in central Oklahoma and once again some areas around Norman were hit hard.
Tremendous dust storms occurred in western Texas.
The storm acted like a vacuum and sucked in all that dust and transported it through the region, at least aloft. We did get my expected mud rain, so if you’re wondering why the car has blotches on it, that’s why.
Locally, even the non-thunderstorm winds were impressive, as was the rising overnight temperatures. Here is a recap from KCI. Note how the temperatures and the dew points were increasing and we were getting 55 mph winds without any storms.
The storm at 8 a.m. this morning is in southeast Iowa and moving away. Note though, typically a storm like this would have a big cold air mass behind it rushing into it to replace the warmer air that we got into yesterday and last night. That is not the case with this storm.
It’s a beaut on the satellite loops.
There was a report from western Texas of strong straight line winds of 115 mph.
Next storm in KC
The next system to watch is so close to producing an accumulating snow for the region and it will be another unusually strong surface storm down towards Arkansas it appears. But if that trends north, we might be setting up for snow on Friday.
There should be another severe weather outbreak in the deep south from this. This would be on Thursday.
Rain is likely at first but there is a chance that this could be a switchover to snow. I do have concern that from the Lake of the Ozarks region towards St. Louis, this could be a significant snowstorm perhaps over 12 inches. Again, this really needs to be watched because we’re about 100-150 miles from getting into it in a much bigger way, especially from KC southwards.
So March may come in like a lamb, but it won’t last long.
Oh and Severe Weather Awareness Week is next week. Tis the season.
Matthew Smith with the featured shot today.
No blog tomorrow…I’ll be in Topeka for a NWS meeting all morning.
Joe
