KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Summer continues, but the worst of the summer humidity hasn’t been a factor for the last few days. And while it may creep up a bit today, it won’t be that awful for this time of the year. The dew points lately have been in the upper 50s to lower 60s and that has allowed things to feel rather comfortable despite highs in the 90-degree range.
It also has allowed overnight lows to drop into the mid-50s in the outlying areas to low-to-mid-60s elsewhere. This morning however, we are waking up to dew points in the mid-60s, so it’s starting to feel a bit more humid out there.
Humidity levels won’t be terrible this weekend. So overall while it will be hot, the heat index won’t be too crazy high compared to the temperatures, likely closer to about 100 degrees give or take a bit.
A cold front will move in on Sunday. It appears that it will move in without fanfare and hopefully will drop the temperatures a few degrees.
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Kansas City forecast:
Today: Sunny and warm with highs in the lower 90s. A little breeze from the south.
Tonight: Fair and pleasant with lows in the upper 60s.
Tomorrow: Sunny and hot with highs in the upper 90s.
Sunday: Partly cloudy and still warm with highs in the lower 90s.
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Discussion:
In some ways there isn’t too much to write about quite yet. In other ways there is. Aside from the heat, and then a cold front early Sunday, all should come along without too much fanfare it appears.
This has been a warm month so far. We’re running 4.5 degrees above average. As a matter of fact, it’s the warmest start to August in 12 years and the 24th-warmest start in about 135 years of records.
From a rain standpoint, it’s been dry at the airport at least, only .05 inch worth of rain so far.
It’s the 13th driest on record through the first 11 days of the month. After this weekend (assuming no rain through Sunday), we’ll move into the top-five driest starts to the month.
So rain is needed. Yesterday the updated drought monitor added in more areas of the metro into the “abnormally dry” category and a small piece of Johnson County, Kansas, into the moderate drought conditions.
On the Kansas side:
Hotter air will be moving into the region tomorrow. It seems KCI has been running a bit hotter than other stations over the last few days for whatever reason. So I took that into account last night with some of my forecast thoughts. A cold front though will take the edge off the temperatures hopefully on Sunday.
That front should knock Sunday down into the 90-degree range, and perhaps less hot farther towards the northeast of the metro.
At this point, it appears as if it will be dry through the weekend. There should be a cap in place and the best instability may be farther towards the southwest of the region. I wouldn’t be shocked if maybe there were a few storms southwest/south of the metro by a couple of counties.
What about our rain chances? Well they may be more tied to disturbances coming down in the northwest flow aloft. There is some hope we could get something from this setup but I had higher confidence yesterday and the day before compared to today’s data. We’re going to need a few things to go our way for us to get the rain from these disturbance. The EURO, which was pretty aggressive, has backed off somewhat for better rains locally. The GFS has something, but it too isn’t overly crazy with the totals.
It has to do with proper placement of little waves coming out of Nebraska. It appears the better chance may be on Tuesday in all of the data.
Tropics are still quiet:
But then look what happened:
In the world of weather, things can change quickly.
That’s it for today and the weekend. See you next week. The feature photo is from Kaden Mason. There was the full moon last night. It was a super moon, so it may have seemed a bit brighter than usual.
Joe
