KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Another beautiful morning to start our day as lows dropped into the lower 60s with very little fog out there compared to the past couple of days. In the end, we should be slightly above average for the next few more days, likely through Saturday before things get considerably cooler on Sunday.
The tropics are active with two hurricanes going: Earl and Danielle. This is the first time that two hurricanes have been active in the Atlantic Basin since mid-September in 2020. This is also the week of the peak of the hurricane season, so it would sort of be unusual for the tropics not to be active. There are a couple of other systems near Africa that are being monitored. The only one that may be an issue to the Island of Bermuda is Earl.
For us, the tricky forecast day is Sunday. There are varying solutions about how that day plays out, from mid-60s with rain most of the day, to low 80s and sunshine. So more clarity is coming regarding Sunday. It may impact the race out at Kansas Speedway as well.
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Kansas City Forecast:
Today: Mostly sunny and warm with highs in the mid-80s.
Tonight: Fair and seasonable with lows in the lower 60s.
Tomorrow: About the same.
Friday: A bit warmer with highs in the upper 80s.
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Discussion:
Big difference to start the day today compared to yesterday: a lot more in the way of clear skies this morning. By the way, don’t be surprised to see another surge of wildfire smoke in the region later today and tomorrow as well. We had a bunch in the sky yesterday afternoon and evening. This smoke is from fires out across Canada and the western U.S. There’s two main areas of smoke: one across eastern Canada and the other across the northern Plains and western U.S.
The darker grays represent the smokier conditions.
The smoke in the western Dakotas, through Montana and Wyoming may be more of an issue tomorrow for us.
So there’s that.
Will it rain on Sunday?
We should remain nice and warm locally through Saturday. Temperatures are again going to be above average around here during the afternoon by several degrees. Both Friday and Saturday may end up well into the 80s ahead of our next cold front. The trick to the forecast is the timing of the next front on Saturday and that may have to do more with the potential development and location of a possible upper-level storm. If it develops near the region, it would slow down the arrival of the cold front and also ensure more rain on Sunday.
In a weird way, when looking at how some of the models are portraying this, it reminds me a winter storm. A disturbance that strengthens and chills the air down right on top of the region, one of those rain-to-rain/snow combos to heavy, wet, snow-type things. Obviously this won’t happen, but if you take the model data and transplant it to January, that’s the way you can get a weird snow event locally.
That several hundred mile difference in the position of a developing upper-level storm means a BIG difference in the weather locally.
Just from a temperature perspective, highs on Sunday below:
Regardless of the model you can see closer to the upper-level system the cooler it is.
The Canadian is even cooler with near 60-degree highs and rain into the afternoon. The ICON is sort of in between with the rain ending after daybreak Sunday and it having the potent upper-level low more towards northeast Missouri.
So where exactly that thing develops and strengthens, will determine whether we have a nice day on Sunday or all of a sudden a rainy wet day with chilly temperatures.
The reason some of the models are doing what they’re doing regarding Sunday is how they handle this dip in the jet stream:
That heat dome by the way is impressive for sure. All-time heat records were set in parts of California yesterday, including Sacramento hitting 116 degrees.
Salt Lake City, Utah, hit 105 degrees, the 33rd time this year they’ve been 100 degrees or higher. The previous record for 100-plus degrees was 21 days.
The California wine country was frying. This is from yesterday.
So Sunday is the day to watch more carefully for something abrupt to happen. Right now, I’m sort of leaning towards a compromise in the data, perhaps not as far west towards Kansas City as the EURO, but not as far northeast of Kansas City as the GFS. My thoughts are perhaps some more rains ending then temperatures recovering to a late-day high closer to 70 degrees or so.
We’ll see how that plays out.
The feature photo is from KCDroneShow from the other day.
Joe
