By now you’ve heard the well mentioned statistic about the lack of 100°+ “officially” at KCI. The streak is at 4 years and counting. For a variety of reasons it hasn’t happened on the north side of the Metro. From Downtown southwards though it has happened…in some cases a couple of time already this summer.
And yet we wait for the “official” station for KC to finally click over…going from 99 to 100°. On Friday we gave it a run…and just fell short thanks to gustier winds that brought air farther and farther into the north side.
Can this be the week to finally break the stretch?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Forecast:
Today: Sunny and seasonable with highs in the upper 80s to near 90°. Light winds. There is also an air quality alert for today too.
Tonight: Fair and seasonable with lows in the upper 60s
Tomorrow: Our next attempt at 100°. I think we fall just short though up at KCI. From Downtown southwards though 100° seems like a better bet. Highs on the northside in the upper 90s
Wednesday: Everyone backs off a bit with highs closer to 90 or the lower 90s.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Discussion:
The rain looked promising on radar on Saturday night…going pretty good across the northern part of KS…then as it came southeastwards it diminished coming into the Metro. Areas north of KC did pretty good though for moisture.
So that has led us to this look for rain over the past 72 hours.
Anywhere from a 1/10″ to 1/2″ in the Metro with 1-3″ or so north and northeast of KC.
Good for them…bad for the KC area…pretty much what I expected last week.
This is an issue for several reasons. Again the terrain is looking stressed in some cases…especially on the south side where any significant rain happened several weekends ago and has evaporated days ago. The scant rains we’ve had since…while almost “frequent” have added up to less than 1/4″ for the most part…and those evaporate that day.
So there is little moisture in the top soil and the expanding cracks in my clay soil indicate this.
Hence the easier ability to get to 100° on the south side. The north side has had a bit more moisture this season. Greener terrain…holds back the temperatures slightly…but when you teetering one way or another at 100°, a slight hold back of 1-2° can make a difference.
So we try again.
Tomorrow is one candidate on the north side. An advancing front will allow a SW flow to develop ahead of the incoming “less hot” air mass scheduled for Wednesday. One aspect though that won’t be in favor of 100° is that the winds won’t exactly be cranking (like what happened this past Friday as we tried to get there). There should be a nice breeze though and the air will not be overly humid (for July). Dew points will be in the mid 60s or so. So that is a plus to get a notch or two hotter.
My thought are though that we fall just short “officially”.
Wednesday won’t be as extreme. Still hot…not as extreme.
Thursday will likely fall just short as well…but hotter and in some cases above 100° again…mainly on the south side though
Then there is Friday. This will be another attempt. We may get close again.
The day that I think has the best chance is Saturday. Here may may hit 100° and exceed it. Some may approach 105°, especially on the south side.
The question after that is for how long. The hot air generator…a sprawling area of the heat dome that will be in the middle of the country can do one of two things…sit in the middle or edge back westwards. The Euro model edges it back westwards and edges down the extreme heat a few degrees.
The American model…which has been an issue for the last couple of weeks in the Plains and southern Plains in over-modeling the higher heat forecasts (and many of the apps you see use this model as a basis for their forecasts) is a bit out of touch again…
Not happening.
The model though doesn’t really push the hot air generator back westwards towards the Rockies like the EURO does…it sort of firmly keeps it in the middle of the US while it waffles around an bit…hence the excessive heat into the end of next week.
One concern though that I do have for the longer range EURO is that the reason why it sends the hot air generator farther west and plants it there is some sort of weird looking splitting of a system in the northeast part of the country which then drops towards the southwest into the TN Valley and shoves the heat dome into the Rockies putting in back into the same flow that we’ve seen for awhile with some periodic rain chances in NW flow aloft. It looks “weird” to me…and if wrong would mean we’d be hotter to some extent next week. Not crazy GFS hot but hotter for the last week of July.
My thoughts at this point is that Friday –> Sunday pose the best chance of use breaking the 100° streak “officially” in KC. My hope is that there will be a front of some sort later Sunday that maybe can take the edge off the heat a bit for a couple of days afterwards.
The next hot weather story of the day is what’s happening today and tomorrow in western Europe…in particular Spain/Portugal northwards towards the UK. Incredible heat…perhaps all time country highs in the UK.
Let’s start here…for perspective and this has been talked about extensively on the news over the last 5 days.
The stat that’s glaring is the 3/5% with A/C. It’s roughly 87% of the US having A/C versus 3 to 5% there. That is significant and when temperatures there top 100…and perhaps nudge 105° like what will be happening within hours there…and the temperatures don’t drop off at night (typical for us in the Plains) that is a big issue.
Already hundreds have died in Spain and Portugal from the heat.
To show the strength…look a this…
That 2nd tidbit about roughly 1.2% of the places hotter than the UK today is pretty incredible. As I type this Paris and London are 95-100°
The all time record in the UK is 101.7° set in 2019.
This is a crazy week for me…lots of long days so the blogs will be infrequent. Should get another done on Wednesday.
The feature photo comes from Chuck Carbajal down in Lees Summit.
Joe
