Showers moved through parts of the Kansas City metro this morning, but as mentioned I don’t think this will be an all day rain in the area, same with Friday, and the weekend looks fine overall.

The timing of said rain chances are complicated, and temperature forecasting is a nightmare with these showers coming through and cooling things down.

The common denominator through Saturday (at least) will be wind, and there will be periodic rain chances next week as well.

As talked about, we’re now entering the wettest time of the year, so it doesn’t take much to rain in May around here. This looks to be true for the next 10 days or so.

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Forecast:

Today: Morning rain chances at times, then variable clouds this afternoon. Seasonable overall with highs around 70°. IF we see more PM sunshine it may be quite a bit warmer.

Tonight: Mostly cloudy with another chance of at least some scattered storms around. Mild and breezy with lows in the 60° range

Tomorrow: IF there are any morning storms…things should improve as the day moves along. Warmer and breezy with highs into the mid 70s perhaps. There will likely be some storms tomorrow night into early Saturday morning. We’ll watch the strength of those storms.

The weekend: Windy with morning sunshine on Saturday and afternoon clouds. Highs 65-70°. Then Partly cloudy Sunday with highs near 70°

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Discussion:

We’re entering a challenging time of the year for meteorologists. I guess almost every time of the year is sort of like this, but it seems late April and May can be more frustrating to figure out sometimes.

If there is more sunshine than expected, considering the higher sun angle and the longer daylight, temperatures can pop way more than expected. Storms and rain can hurt a temperature forecast and cool things down more than you think.

So bear with us, and that includes the end of this week. I tend to tinker with the forecast between newscasts a bit, usually adding or subtracting a few degrees here and there in a 48-hour forecast all in an effort to be as precise as possible.

This morning we start with developing showers and perhaps a few rumbles. Here is radar, shouldn’t last for too long.

The issue for today is do we clear out, or at least break up the clouds in the afternoon? That’s important, because IF we do, we could really warm-up. The morning run of the HRRR model shows potential 80° temperatures this afternoon.

It’s doable considering the winds will be stirring the air up, but it will be dependent on the sunshine to break through. Here is the satellite picture, and I won’t be surprised if we warm up more than forecasts suggest.

So that is complication #1

The next is what to do about tonight. A warm front will be well north of the area, so the area most favorable for lift is actually into northern MO and far NE KS. At the same time, strong winds just above the surface will be bring in moisture through the region, so at least some scattered activity is possible first thing Friday morning before we dry out for most of the day.

Then complication #3 is the storm potential and the strength of said storms Friday night and very early Saturday. A powerful storm will be moving through the Plains with a cold front/dry line setting up in the central part of KS on Friday.

Here are the forecast dew points later in the afternoon. We’re solidly in the 60-65° area of dewpoints with areas out west of the area much drier. That is the dry line that sets up.

This is connected to a rather strong upper level wave that may close off in NE and IA tomorrow night into Saturday. The dry line is important because it can be a trigger for storms to develop, but at the same time, there will be a cap present holding off storm development for the afternoon tomorrow out towards the west of the region.

The cap though should break toward sunset, and storms should fire off in central KS and race towards the ENE. Those storms are the ones that we will watch.

There hasn’t been much of a change in the severe weather outlook for later tomorrow into tomorrow night.

The risk of tornadoes is there out to the west mainly.

There are still questions about all of this out there, especially including how the cap will hold and how long the cap will hold. Cooler air will eventually wrap around the surface storm and “catch-up” to the dry line.

So the surface weather map looks like this by 10PM tomorrow night.

Storms should fire off at some point in the evening to the west and approach the area. The issue is how strong will the storms be when they get here.

The closer they form close to the area, the stronger the storms may be in the region. Again, the timing of this is sometime later Friday evening.

There will be instability through 10PM for the storms to work with, so IF they can arrive earlier, that would be another factor in maintaining the strength with the storms. The later the storms arrive the less instability there will be for them to work with with a cooling environment.

So that will be watched, but again, the potential is there for stronger storms. The atmosphere when the storms come in though, if they come in early enough, could help to produce quick spin-ups. This is something that bears watching for tomorrow night especially after 9PM.

All this will have blown through by Saturday morning and we should be in fine shape for the weekend. The question about Saturday is the temperatures. We’ll be starting out in the 50s, and we’ll have a downslope strong wind blowing during the day. At the same time the atmosphere aloft will be cooling down, so let’s go with 65-70 for highs.

Sunday looks nice with a bit less wind. More rain chances come next week.

The feature photo is from Ben…always cool shots with the drone!

Joe