KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The weird month of January continues to draw to a close. We’re running 9 degrees above average and it’s our warmest January (so far) since 2006. We’ve had 3 inches of snow and will likely finish the month below average.

For the snow season, we’re only at about 4.7 inches, which is about half of what were average around these parts.

Can February turn snowier? Well, last year it was a struggle for snow until things got going in February. We had 14.4 inches of snow in February and the first 10 days of March when the last accumulating flakes fell. You can rebound in a big way. Sadly though (for snow lovers at least), there isn’t a lot of hope for awhile for anything big. The lack of snow of significance may continue for awhile it appears.

So it goes.

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Kansas City Forecast:

Today: Partly cloudy, breezy and warmer, highs near 50 degrees.

Tonight: Fair and mild with lows in the 30s.

Tomorrow: Partly cloudy with more PM clouds behind an arctic front coming into the region in the afternoon. Highs may peak near 50-55 degrees before the front comes in, then falling temperatures behind the front.

Sunday: Partly cloudy and colder with highs in the lower 20s. Windy as well.

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Discussion:

The last few days of January will be colder, but it will be milder today and tomorrow it appears. An arctic front will change the weather significantly starting tomorrow evening. That front will bring us below average again for a few days.

The air behind it will be cold. Sunday will struggle to get to 25 degrees. There are some decent signs we may get some sunshine to help the cause for tailgaters a bit, but it will still be a cold day in the area.

The lack of precipitation, aside from maybe some freezing mist/drizzle or a couple of snowflakes later Saturday night or Sunday early morning, is just part of the weird way of the winter thus far. Usually with such a warm air mass, we’d have some juicier air around too. But it appears that juicier air will be diverted towards central/southern Missouri ahead of the front. That means the front will mostly come through dry for the region with minimal precipitation.

The air coming our way is up in Canada and the northern reaches of the hemisphere right now. It will flow southwards and arrive later tomorrow.

Temperatures up there now are cold. Not brutal for them, but cold.

The colder air tomorrow will be flowing southwards. You can see it a bit more clearly as we go a few thousand feet up.

There is the cold. You can see it pretty well with the cyan to pinkish colors.

The winds at that same level will be rushing that air to the south.

So that’s the cold that will be moving into the region later tomorrow.

Ahead of the cold, it will be mild. The milder start to the day plus the warm air ahead of the front could allow temperatures to get out of control if things worked out. The HRRR model is sniffing on this potential.

I’ve been thinking that if the front was a bit slower, this would be possible. The data today shows a slower frontal arrival time. Could some areas on the southside surge to near 60 degrees? Maybe.

For snow lovers though… yikes. It appears next week will be dominated by chilly, but mostly dry air, and that isn’t helpful for snow chances. The GFS model through 16 days has this from the overnight data:

It appears that if we’re going to get snow around here, the window is getting smaller and smaller. We may be needing a late season Hail Mary-type snowstorm.

The feature photo comes from Sandra Cox in central Missouri.

Joe