KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Well well well, what do we have here… an unusually strong diving clipper system that model data jumped all over last night, and is being shown to take a unique, sort of needle-in-the-haystack track west of the area, while intensifying. That would bring accumulating snow into the area with a shot of some pretty darn cold air into Saturday morning.
This clipper, if it did what the models are suggesting (which I don’t have a lot of faith in from 3-4 days out) would move through central and eastern Kansas. This would place the region into an area of snow with a dump of real cold air at the same time, and that creates interesting output in the models… so much snow that it’s conceivable that someone could get a mini-snowstorm out of this for several hours.
The only way this works though for the State Line area is if the system does indeed “dig in” so much that it goes west of the Kansas City area. That would be a favorable path for accumulating snow locally. If it’s on top of us or farther east, this won’t work for us (or we get something much lighter).
Anyway, it’s an interesting trend in the data that I’ll watch this week.
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Forecast:
Today: Sunny, windy and warmer. Highs approach 60 degrees. Winds may gust to 30-plus mph.
Tonight: Fair and cool with lows in the upper 20s.
Tomorrow: Nice with lighter winds and highs in the mid-50s.
Thursday: A few degrees less warm but pleasant with highs in the 50-55 degree range.
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Discussion:
I don’t want to dive in too hard on this thing for the end of the week yet. When I wrote the blog up yesterday talking about the lack of snow in the data, I did see this thing. I did think to myself, suppose it dug in harder and farther west… then I thought, naw, what are the chances. And it would have to come much farther west, which is something these things haven’t done in a VERY long time.
Sure enough, last night the data went MUCH farther west. This, combined with a dump of some pretty cold air into the area on Saturday, would create a winter wonderland-type snow event for us since both would happen on the heels of each other. First the snow, then the cold air dump.
While this is all well and good on the models, I did want to see if the ensembles were doing something along the same lines. And sure enough, more than a few have something “cooking.”
Here are the EURO runs with averages in the 2-4-inch range.
The GFS runs from overnight, roughly a 1-3-inch event.
And the Canadian runs: a dusting to 2-inch event.
So something is on the table all of a sudden. Again, let’s not “dive in” too hard because if that thing doesn’t “dive in” from a track standpoint, it would be a waste of time for us locally really (aside from a shot of cold air).
It did catch my attention though. So I figure I’d get ahead of things on the blog for you at least. It would be the type of system that could overachieve based on dynamics. Although, the moisture in the atmosphere could be problematic to allow it to overachieve.
Before we get there, plenty of milder-than-average air around these parts into Thursday.
Onwards…
I need to do some recapping of 2021 for you.
It was a warm year overall. Despite the crazy cold February, December ended up crazy warm, so the two sort of cancelled each other out.
It was our 17th warmest, tying us with 1964. Not as warm as 2016, 2006 and 2012.
For high temperatures, it was our 16th warmest and for lows, it was our 28th warmest.
For moisture, it was our 36th wettest locally.
Interesting to note the years since 2000 that are showing up in the Top 35. Nine years in the Top 35 just since 2000.
Here is a look at how the country fared in 2021. These are the individual rankings out of 127 (so 127 would be No. 1 and it goes backwards from there).
At least from a temperature standpoint, there is a lot of warmth once again. Obviously with the changing climate, we’re seeing this more and more. No state had their warmest year on record, but there are a LOT of top 5s in there.
Of the many fascinating things about 2021: If you just break out two months of the year, February and December, it’s truly a study of contrasts.
Lots of extremes in there.
Overall for the nation as a whole, this was the fourth-warmest year. All those contrasts leads to more extreme weather.
A few notables via NOAA which is where the maps above are coming from as well:
What a year. My guess is 2022 is going to be pretty nutty.
The feature photo comes from KadenWx on Twitter.
joe
