Kansas City weather: Recapping a warm summer, weekend forecast

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In the weather world, today marks the start of meteorological Fall. This runs from today through the last day of November. Then on December 1st, meteorological winter begins. The weather enterprise does this for the ease of statistics since astronomical fall (and the other start dates of the seasons) can vary by a day or two.

This keeps stats nice and simple. So from June 1st through the end of August…meteorological summer proved to be a hot one locally. 40th hottest and 35th driest. More on that in the discussion.

Meanwhile…while a new meteorological season has started, we’ve got the same ole weather, aside from some clouds around this morning that should thin…more above average temperatures are expected for quite some time it appears, and certainly through the holiday weekend.

There are also some small rain chances to watch for as well.

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Forecast:

Today: Mostly sunny and hot with highs approaching 90°

Tonight: Not as cool as it has been with lows in the upper 60s

Tomorrow: Mostly sunny to partly cloudy skies. Just a small chance of a shower/storm somewhere later in the day or evening. Highs again near 90°

The holiday weekend: Not a lot of change really. Small rain chances and hot and humid conditions. Highs in the upper 80s or so.

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So let’s start with a recap of the meteorological summer. As I mentioned this was the 40th hottest.

It was actually hotter last year as an average…and I’ve highlighted the hotter seasons this century for you. It’s fair to say that the southside of the Metro was hotter however.

In terms of dryness…35th driest…your results may vary in your backyard though

Since 6/3 here are the totals…via CoCoRaHS

Across the eastern 2/3rds of the country…here are the rankings for temperatures for the season itself

The orange and red boxes show the top 10 rankings for a particular location.

For rain…

Light brown/dark brown boxes are Top 10 driest and light green and dark green boxes are Top 10 wettest

So there’s that.

This mornings satellite loop shows the remnants of thunderstorms that were out in the Plains yesterday.

Those storms have generated a weak disturbance that will wallow around for awhile. The clouds have thinned though as they approach the metro mostly.

We’ve been in the upper 80s to near 90 these last couple of days but dew points have been in the 50s…pretty comfortable for us in late August. Today the dew points will be in the lower 60s with a slow creep up.

For the next few days, with temperatures near 90°…dew points will be back into the mid to upper 60s it appears…that means you’ll start to feel the mugginess a bit more and that should continue through the weekend.

Rain chances are slim for any one spot but not zero. That remnant disturbance in the Plains will sort of have a mind of it’s own and potentially also connect or play with another disturbance in the southern Plains region into the weekend. This may enhance the rain chances towards the SW part of the area into the Lakes region tonight into tomorrow.

Then there is a weak front that may try to slide towards us on Friday night or Saturday early morning. This may bring another chance of rain, especially in NW MO towards the region. It should bring slightly cooler weather into the area for the weekend, perhaps more mid to upper 80s with small PM chances.

Aside from that though…not a lot happening rally into next week. The main weather stories are the intense heat expected in the western US…especially the valleys of central CA…where highs may exceed 110° with the potential of all-time September records and also the tropics.

There is a new tropical storm (Danielle) in the middle of the Atlantic…and should strengthen to a hurricane over the coming days. It’s not the one we’ve been tracking lately in the southern Atlantic tropical basin…this is farther north. This is the 1st named storm since Colin fell apart on July 3rd. This ends the longest named storm drought in the tropical season in 81 years. Without a named storm in August…that’s the 3rd time that’s happened since 1960