KANSAS CITY, Mo. — We’re halfway through the month, and so far the average temperatures are running more than 4 degrees above average. This week though will be different.
After a hot weekend with highs in the upper 90s on Saturday and the lower 90s yesterday, things today will be warm, but likely not in the 90s. After today, we should remain in the 80s for the rest of the week, with an outlier likely tomorrow, perhaps only in the cool 70s.
The reason for the coolness is rain. Needed for sure, and while the amounts may not be overwhelming around the metro, areas east of Kansas City are likely to get significantly more rain than areas to the west. That’s great for the bigger rain areas, and not so great for areas that get less in terms of the totals because ALL of the region can really use a good 1-3-inch slow-soaker rain.
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Kansas City Forecast:
Today: Partly cloudy and seasonable with highs in the upper 80s. There may be an isolated evening shower.
Tonight: Increasing clouds with some showers/storms possible by daybreak. Lows in the 60s.
Tomorrow: Rain and some storms likely. Highs only in the low-to-mid-70s. There is potential we see some areas, farther east, stay in the 60s.
Wednesday: Nicer with highs in the the 80-85-degree range.
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Discussion:
After a wet May for many areas, since June 1 we’re running about 4.5 inches below average up at KCI. Some areas are much drier than that compared to average at least, so let’s start there.
Take a look at the last 60 days of rain anomalies. You can see some areas in Kansas City south of Interstate 70 running about 1/4-1/2 inch their normal rain.
We all know summer rains can be hit or miss, and that’s mostly been the case for awhile now. There is a stretch up towards 36 highway in northern Missouri that has done better than many areas.
Then there is the St. Louis area that has had too much of a good thing locally as we’ve discussed in the blog and on the air for a few weeks now. Remember they too were in pretty rough shape until all the flooding rains started.
Drought to the south
Regionally it gets significantly worse the farther south you go.
Heck you can double the time frame and extend this out to 120 days.
No bueno in Texas.
As a matter of fact, Austin, Texas, yesterday marked their 47th-straight dry day. Things might be changing for the better though. San Antonio yesterday had their coolest day since late May with a high of 87 degrees and there has been a lot of rain associated with a tropical system in southern Texas, including flooding rains in spots too.
Here’s hoping that rain makes it up towards the upper reaches of the Rio Grande basin in southwest Texas. The river there is abnormally low to barely even running at this point.
Looks promising.
It doesn’t take much to create flooding down there, even with the dryness of the summer months, and there are lots of mountainous areas in southwest Texas, so likely this will create some flooding issues.
Front moves through Kansas City
What about us? This tropical rain system in Texas won’t affect us tomorrow. A front has moved through over the weekend. That’s why on the north side at least it wasn’t quite as hot yesterday. It was a whooping 6 degrees less hot.
The front has pretty much gone stationary.
Tonight with that front situated about there and a disturbance coming down from the Plains, a rather strong low-level jet stream will run “over” the surface front. That low-level jet will be blowing from the southwest to the northeast and that will create a lot of lift. The atmosphere will be loaded with moisture, especially northeast of the metro tomorrow morning. It is the recipe for healthy rain totals.
The issue is who gets the most from this. Model solutions have varied over the past few days on the location. It’s the reason why, even last Wednesday when the setup was becoming more apparent in the data, that I was mentioning the potential for heavy rains, but the location was still in flux.
It appears though that the location of the heaviest rains may favor areas farther towards the east and northeast of Kansas City tomorrow compared to areas to the west and southwest.
Here are three models showing roughly that idea, starting with the EURO model:
Now the GFS:
And the overnight NAM model:
Most favored areas of heaviest rains are towards central Missouri as opposed to the State Line region (on average).
It doesn’t mean we won’t get something. We should, although that sharp western cut-off isn’t a great look for areas from Lawrence, Kansas, and west.
So if we have rain for awhile tomorrow… temperatures will struggle.
This will also allow a cooler air mass to control the weather for awhile this week. The overnight EURO ensembles show decent temperatures for the week leading into the weekend.
There also might be another rain chance showing up on Friday.
Finally a note about the tropics, and the continued “quietness” of them.
The last named storm was Colin back on July 2, some 44 days ago.
A lot of things can happen, but it still looks awfully quiet for the next 5-10 days at least.
Then there’s this showing the birth of what would become the season’s first named storm, Andrew, 30 years ago today.
The feature photo is from Grizzle via Instagram. Nice sunrise from yesterday.
Joe
