wxteam4's Blog

A severe thunderstorm watch has been issued for counties just to the east of the Kansas City metro until 9 p.m. tonight.  The main threat with storms that do develop throughout the remainder of the day will be damaging winds, frequent lightning, small hail and heavy rainfall within some of the slower moving storms.  There are already three flash flood warnings in place as I write this post...all of which expire at 8:30 this evening.

Click here to see the latest watches and warnings

Most of the rain and thunderstorm activity should be over by 10 p.m. in the metro and by midnight for areas to the east.  Tomorrow the front will be far enough to our south that the best chance for rain should be well south of the metro.  We will also see slightly cooler temperatures for our Wednesday...and less humidity as well.

-Karli

 

With all the heat and humidity that built up over the past two days...you'd think that storms would be firing up right on top of us....but the air aloft is quite warm as well...so that has prevented activity from initiating so far. IF the storms out there keep weakening...they may be DOA tomorrow morning...but for those hoping for some showers...all hope is not lost.

Radar trends have shown quite a bit of weakening of the storms over north-central Kansas this evening. The low level flow is so warm, and the updrafts so anemic, that the rain cooled air is not quite enough to keep the storms alive and healthy.  The cold pool uner the rain cooled air has formed, and as a result,  the boundary is making slow but sure  progress toward Kansas City, which will gradually increase the low level moisture convergence.  The evening sounding also showed an elevated layer of well mixed air and precipitable water readings at or above 1.50", so the juice is there...we just need the spark, to keep the rain alive, or re-initiate rainfall tomorrow if the storms out west fizzle before arrival overnight.

Unfortunately the upper air support is pretty weak. Temperatures at 18,000 feet were around -5C (23 F) which is pretty warm for air at that level.  Plus between 10,000 and 30,000 feet the highest wid speeds were only 30 knots ( 34.6 mph)  Those speeds can sustain some weak updrafts...but until the air up there cools...or the speeds and divergence increases...we can expect any rain that does arrive to be less than impressive.

Wind speeds aloft are progged to increase gradually tomorrow, which should increse updraft potential across the area.  It's looking as if the morning hours could see some spotty elevated showers...with a  rumble of thunder possible. The boundary should drift across the area, nearly stalling to our south in the afternoon...then storms should redevelop along the boundary in the afternoon as southern Missouri heats up in to the 90s again...creating a strong inflow zone just to our south.  So it's likely that the heaviest of the rainfall will skip over the metro area...and we'll end up with quite a bit less rainfall than areas to our northwest tonight....and to our southeast tomorrow afternoon.

By Wednesday the boudary will be far enough south, that storm chances will be all but gone...however with a 300 mb jet overhead, and slightly better lapse rates...an isolated storms can;t be ruled out.  After that...it's back to sunshine and warmer air for the weekend!

By the way, I refer to the "boundary" heading our way as such, because it is not a true "front" which would imply that we are changing air masses.  The true cold frontal boundaries will be far to our north, and not make inroads this far south.  While temperatures will be cooler the next couple of days...it will be as a result of the cloud cover...not an airmass change.  The density of the air will not change dramatically, nor will the thckness of the atmpsphere.  Sometimes these trofs are incorrectly called a front.  Just a little met 101 lesson for you tonight. Identifying the airmass is a key to forecasting!

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Mike

Bertha officially got upgraded to a hurricane this morning...and could reach category 2 strength later today.  If you are interested in tracking Bertha, or any other tropical activity, you can check out our website's "Tropical Weather" tab under the weather tab.  It will by default bring you to Kansas City, but you can hold the left mouse button down and pan over to the Atlantic to see the latest on Bertha.  I'll also include a link to the National Hurricane Center's website to see the latest on Bertha on there as well.

Click here to see the NHC site

I hope that everyone had a great 4th...stay cool today!

-Karli

Thanks for spending part of your holiday weekend with the FOX 4 Weather Blog!

No real changes needed to the forecast thoughts from a few days ago...a couple of stray storms are always possible over the next 2 days...but there is really nothing noteworthy to enhance the storm chances till TUE...at that point a weak trof (wind shift) will slide towards the I-70 corridor and should be able to spark off a more concentrated area of storms that should give some of us some rainfall...storms will be slow moving so some may get over 1-2" but again some will miss out...right now my chance on TUE is 50%...

Very hot weather (hottest so far) likely for the next 2 days with highs between 91-95 degrees...dewpoints in the upper 60s or so should allow the Heat Index to close in on 100 in the afternoon hours...

Wednesday rain chances are dwindling...I will keep a 30% chance in there in case this next trof is huffing through the area...but odds at this point favor a cold pool to generate with the storms that form on TUE...this should give the front a push in the you kknow what...and send it towards the I-44 corridor...later nextr week looks pretty toasty with temps back in the 90s by next weekend, if not earlier...the summer doldrums are definately settling in now!

I had Chris do another interesting research project...he's been crunching numbers for the last couple of weeks...so without any more delay...here is Chris's work...

More interesting statistics associated with this last project. For this one, we took the years of 1970 thru 2007, 38 years, and in the months of July, August and September, we tallied the daily highs. To make the data easier to analyze, we tallied the number of 100s, 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, and yes, even 40s for each month. We have also cooked up some graphs to help show the breakdown for each month. So without further explanation….the results:

 

In the month of July for the last 38 years, ~44% of the month was spent with highs in the 80s and, ~42% was spent in the 90s. A greater percent (~7%) of the month was spent in the 70s (~7%) than in the 100s (~5%). And for the 38 years, only 7 days in July were spent in the 60s (~.6%).

 

Now for August. 80° highs held the greatest percent again with ~44%. 90° highs fell back a little in the percentage of the month, ~35%. And 70° highs jumped up to ~14%, as well as 60° high up to ~1%. However, the percentage of the month spent with 100° highs stayed about the same, ~5%.

 

Finally, the breakdown for September gives us a few surprises. Again, 80° highs held the greatest percentage, ~40%. Like we expect it to, the percentage of 90° highs dropped off quite a bit to only ~12% and the 60° and 70° highs came up, ~14% and ~29% respectively. The 100° highs all but disappeared, down to <.5% (only 5 days in the last 38 years for month of September). We had 50° highs make quite an appearance with ~3% and….like I mentioned above, we even had 40° highs. One day in the last 38 years, in the month of September, had a high in the 40s: September 29th, 1985. In case you’re curious about the percentage, that’s 0.09%.

 

I know all these numbers are hard to keep straight, and if you are a visual person…like myself, graphs just give you a better idea: 

My next project idea is for him to analyize the differences in high temperatures over the course of a year between KCI/Downtown and Pleasant Hill...using KCI as the "control" if you will...he'll be starting on that this afternoon...there used to be rather significant differences...especially with high temperatures...to the tune of 2-4 degrees but my own observations lately seem to show a lesser difference...we'll see what Chris comes up with...

Joe

Grabbed a quick lunch this afternoon...and had 3 people in 5 minutes tell me their experience with the storm...in some respects...by the time insurance adjusters are done...this may be one of the more costly weather events in the area over the last few years...only because there was a considerable swath of damaging hail up to near baseball size in a largely populated sector...it'll be interesting what the numbers end up at...here at the station at least 10 cars suffered close to 2000 in damage...so right there you're looking at 20K in damages...this one may get into the millions of dollars by the time it's all said and done...hail can do that...there have been storms in the past in Denver and Dallas, if memory serves...Denver was devastated by on e back in June of 1990 if I remember to the tune of $600+ million worth...

As is typical some areas had too much rain...others not nearly what they were looking for...amounts were all over the place...


Metro Close-Up...


Details concerning the rain chances later PM and this evening on the newscasts...

Tomorrow should be fine...we'll enjoy another day with "low for July" dewpoints...and gradually on SAT the humidity starts to come back up...I can't guarantee everybody will have a perfectly dry July 4th weekend...there will be showers/t-showers possible...on SAT the better chances may be to the west...on SUN the chances may be near us...again nothing at this point to cancel plans over...but with heat+humidity+NW Flow...the chances certainly will be there, virtually everyday,  till farther notice...by later SUN we should be capped enough to prevent activity...but if something weird happens overnight SAT then that could leave outflow boundaries in the vicinity...so again no promises for a "perfectly" dry holiday weekend...but the vast majority at this point looks OK...getting hotter and more humid towards the end of the weekend...and again...not everyone will experience the same rain situation over the next 4 days...better chance of something more widespread, from so far away, maybe next WED...

A lot of heat and humidity will be lurking in OK/TX/AR for the next few days...so it's really just a matter of time before it returns to the area...

Onto the tropics...where Tropical Storm Bertha developed today well out in the eastern Atlantic...as a matter of fact it's the farthest east a tropical system has developed in modern weather times (since the satellites started in 1967). It's out by the Cape Verde Islands and has winds as of this writing @ 40 MPH and may strengthen a bit over the next couple of days...is this a harbinger of things to come for the rest of the season...per the AOML Hurricanes FAQ section...btw..check out the "Tropical" section under the weather tab...great updates to the site and much faster than last year!

However, as shown in (Goldenberg 2000), if one looks only at the June-July Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes occurring south of 22°N and east of 77°W (the eastern portion of the Main Development Region [MDR] for Atlantic hurricanes), there is a strong association with activity for the remainder of the year. According to the data from 1944-1999, total overall Atlantic activity for years that had a tropical storm or hurricane form in this region during JJ have been at least average and often times above average. So it could be said that a JJ storm in this region is pretty much a "sufficient" (though not "necessary") condition for a year to produce at least average activity. (I.e., Not all years with average to above-average total overall activity have had a JJ storm in that region, but almost all years with that type of JJ storm produce average to above-average activity.) The formation of a storm in this region during June-July is taken into account when the August updates for the Bill Gray and NOAA seasonal forecasts are issued. ...end text

Typically we don't see activity in the Cape Verde area so early in the year...but it's happened 8 times before as recently as 1998...in another forum this lead to research that showed that in these 8 specific years, there were on average almost 4 hurricanes of Cape Verde origins...compared to a "typical" year of almost 2. Something to remember for the rest of the season...

btw...thx for the dozens of pictures...MT is going through them and will show more tonight...very impressive hail/wall cloud shots!

If this is your last time here before the 4th weekend...have a happy and safe one...weather will dictate farther updates through SUN...if I have something interesting to tell you about I will come up with another blog for you...

Forecast details on all the newscasts...

Joe

That is the question right now...whether or not we'll see more rain/storms develop this afternoon.  There are several factors coming into play that could determine if we see any more rain later today and into the evening.  I personally think we'll see more rain/storms develop later today and into the evening hours...come to an end sometime around midnight, or shortly thereafter...then possibly see some redevelopment of rain/storms tomorrow.  First off, several boundaries are in place...some from this mornings rain, one from the actual front, and lastly, the MCV moving through Nebraska.  All of these will be areas to watch for initiation of rain/storms this afternoon(and in some cases, where rain/storms are ongoing)

The scattered rain/storms should continue overnight and tomorrow's rain will depend on how far south the front makes it as well as the placement of leftover boundaries again tomorrow.  I think the best chance for rain on Thursday during the afternoon hours will be across southern parts of the viewing area and not necessarily in the KC metro. 

We are also under a slight risk for severe weather for the remainder of today.  Any storms that do develop this evening could reach strong to severe limits.  The main threat with these storms will be hail, damaging winds and heavy rainfall.  This morning some locations picked up 1-2" of rain, which does not help the flooding situation.  Flash Flood watches are posted for the potential for heavy rain tonight and tomrorow(this does include the KC metro).

Click here to see the latest flood watches/warnings

Click here to see the latest severe weather outlook

Going into Friday we'll see temperatures below average, but I do think the weather will be dry for your Fourth of July cookouts and fireworks.

Have a great rest of your Wednesday!

-Karli

First off I want to wish everyone a happy first day of July!!!  We started off the month pretty warm and humid and that will pretty much be the case for the rest of the week/weekend with the exception being Thursday and possibly Friday.  Rain chances will return late tomorrow and carry over to our Thursday as a front pushes its way through the state.  I think the rain should be over no later than Thursday evening and our Fourth of July looks dry, with partly to mostly cloudy skies expected.  The rest of the holiday weekend we'll warm back up into the upper 80s with dry weather expected.

Now on to the recap of the month of June.  The National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill put out there analysis for last month for KCI and St. Joseph and here is what they had to say:

"NEAR NORMAL TEMPERATURES AND NEAR NORMAL PRECIPITATION
CHARACTERIZED KANSAS CITY WEATHER IN JUNE...

...NEAR NORMAL TEMPERATURES AND ABOVE NORMAL PRECIPITATION
CHARACTERIZED SAINT JOSEPH WEATHER IN JUNE...

THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE AT THE KANSAS CITY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT WAS
73.8 DEGREES...WHICH WAS 0.2 DEGREES ABOVE NORMAL. THE AVERAGE HIGH
TEMPERATURE WAS 83.4 DEGREES OR 0.5 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL. THE
AVERAGE LOW TEMPERATURE WAS 64.3 DEGREES WHICH WAS 1.1 DEGREES ABOVE
NORMAL. THE HIGHEST TEMPERATURE FOR THE MONTH WAS 91 DEGREES ON THE
25TH. THE LOWEST TEMPERATURE WAS 55 DEGREES ON THE 17TH.

PRECIPITATION CAME IN AT 4.31 INCHES FOR THE MONTH...OR 0.13 INCHES
BELOW NORMAL. THE GREATEST TOTAL IN A 24 HOUR PERIOD WAS 0.98 OF AN
INCH ON THE 15TH.

AT SAINT JOSEPH...THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 73.8 DEGREES...WHICH
WAS 0.7 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL. THE AVERAGE HIGH TEMPERATURE WAS 84.1
DEGREES WHICH WAS 1.6 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL. THE AVERAGE LOW
TEMPERATURE WAS 63.6 DEGREES WHICH WAS 0.3 DEGREES ABOVE NORMAL. THE
HIGHEST TEMPERATURE WAS 91 DEGREES ON THE 25TH AND 3RD. THE LOWEST
TEMPERATURE WAS 53 DEGREES ON THE 17TH.

THE PRECIPITATION TOTAL AT SAINT JOSEPH WAS 6.54 INCHES...OR 2.33
INCHES ABOVE NORMAL. THE GREATEST TOTAL IN A 24 HOUR PERIOD WAS 2.26
INCHES ON THE 12TH."

As you just read, it was a pretty typical month of June for both spots temperature wise...and not too much above average precip wise for St. Joseph. 

Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday everyone!!!

-Karli

No weather to speak of for a few days so we'll take a day to day weather break for today's blog ..latest forecast details on the news @ 9/10 tonight...meanwhile Chris has been hard at work going back through his Research Project #2 with some new information...so without further ado...Chris takes over from here...

This is a follow-up project on one we did earlier this summer. Remember the project where we looked at the first 90 degree day of the year, the first 100 degree day of the year, and the total number of 90 degree plus days each year, from 1950 to 1999? Well one of our readers suggested that we look at the number of 100 degree plus days and the number of 105 degree plus days so that we could get a good look at the extremes. In addition to doing this, I also added the years 2000 to 2007 to the data….so that changes a few things, nothing much, but enough to talk about.

 

            First, let’s talk about the number of 100°+ and 105°+ days. For the most part, one could expect fewer than 10 days out of the year to have a high above 100 degrees. In the 58 year period, 22 of those years did not even reach 100°. For those 36 years that did, the average number of days per year in the 100° zone was 7 with a standard deviation of 6. That means that years with more than 13 days of highs 100°+ are statistically significant. Six appeared in the set: 1953, 1954, 1970, 1980, 1983, and 1988. If you remember from last time, 1953 and 1954 were in the hot streak during the early 1950s, 1970 had an early first 90° day on April 27th, 1980 had both an early 90°+ and 100°+ day, and 1988 also had an early 100°+ day on June 20th. The maximum number of 100°+ days was 30 in…you guessed it….1954. So we’re seeing some connection between early heat waves and total number of 100°+ days. Now let’s look at the next step…105°+ days. While 36 of the 58 years we looked at had highs above 100°, only 8 years had highs above 105°, and most of those are the same years with a significant number of 100°+ days. Here they are: 1954*, 1970*, 1974, 1980*, 1983*, 1984, 1988*, 2000, and 2003. No surprise that 1954 led the way with an astounding 8 days of the year with highs above 105° with 1980 following with 5 days. The remaining years only had a day or two above 105°.

 

            Here are just a few tid-bits about our hottest year of the set: 1954.  In 1954, we had a pretty average first 90° day on June 9th; a little early, but nothing to write home about. But…a little more than two weeks later, we hit our first 100° day on June 25th. 1954 was also our maximum 90°+ days (tied with 1953), 100°+ days, and 105°+ days. July 13th, 1954 is the second hottest day on record with a high of 112°. And 1954 holds 9 records for daily highs in the month of July.

 

            Alright, and to tie up a few loose ends regarding the addition of 8 years to the previous project. The average number of 90°+ days per year did not change, but the standard deviation did. A.k.a…..there are a few more years that are now statistically significant. We tacked on an additional year where the first 90° day happened in April (2006), as well as another year with a first 90° day in July (2004). 2004 also got close to the record minimum number of 90°+ days per year for our data period. The record is 8 which happened in 1992….2004 had 10 days with 90°+ highs. 2006 also had statistically significant number of 90°+ days, as did 2002, both of which were in the high 50s. But there has not been any year since the turn of the century with early or late 100° days, they have all been pretty normal…occurring in July or August. Though two years, 2004 and 2005, did not even reach 100° at all. Also, nothing statistically significant about the number of 100°+ days or the number of 105°+ days thus far this century.

At least to our forecast today...some areas had quite the storm last night with rain totals well over 1"...there were also some hail reports and some stronger winds...just SW of Carrolton windows were blown out in a house and a 50' tree was knocked over...on the west side of Ft Scott...100 trees were knocked over with numerous power outages because of 20-40 lines down...metro rain totals were all over the place...just a few drops for many on the KS side to over 1" in some areas...

This AM's map is interesting to me...first we've got some cloud issues out there during the first part of the day...we also have some sprinkles/light showers on the KS side moving along I-70...so we may deal with that to start the weekend...


Then there is the REAL coldfront that will be moving in this afternoon...the surface map this AM shows it still up in NE...


Notice how the winds have already switched back towards the SW...the clouds today will keep the instability down somewhat...however with dewpoints between 60-65 a front coming in...again convergence should be weak...I'm wondering if maybe we can pop some storms along the I-35 corridor and points southwards in the later PM hours...this will be a situation where you'll be able to watch the trends yourself...if you start noticing some decent vertical development of the clouds in the PM hours...that is a good sign that someone will pick up some rainfall...I'm toying with 20-30% chances for the PM...

The storms last night...really didn't scour out the atmosphere as much as I hoped they would...and they certainly didn't give the front a push southwards...so that is why I've got concerns...especially for the PM hours...

Joe

One of my rules of thumb when forecasting afternoon convection after a MCS rolls through the region is don't...rarely do we get any new storms fire up again after rain moves through in the AM hours...the atmosphere gets totally turned over...temperatures rarely heat up enough and wind fields are at best erratic...however...another rule of thumb I have is that if a front will push through in June...stick in a rain chance...after all it's June...so a conundrum for the forecast...also watch out for elevated convergence areas when temperatures really warm up...jsut because the air is not converging a lot at the surface...it can be more impressive behind the front as you go up in the atmosphere...convergence is convergence...

I think the rest of the afternoon should be OK...temps are struggling as of this writing but should make it into the middle 80s...dewpoints are not uge...but should get close to 65...and our front which is still in the western plains as of this writing will start to accelerate towards us later this afternoon...now the RUC is forecasting capes of 4500 I think...its wrong...if you look it's also forecasting surface temperatures near 90 and dewpoints int he 70s...not going to happen either...so as the front comes in this evening...it won't be encountering all the instability that the 12Z RUC is thinking...also the convergence is weak as well...there may be an initial wind shift but the cooler/drier air seems to lag behind the front for a few hours...so where does that leave my forecast...

I'll be keeping the 40% chance of storms in there...many areas will probably miss out...my feeling as of this writing is that the best chance of rain is after 6PM...perhaps towards 8PM or so from the NW to the SE as time goes on...if your heading to the game...go...but bring an umbrella to be safe...hopefully you won't need it...I do think whatever blows in will be moving E or ESE at around 20-25 mph...not a training situation...so they'll get the game in I believe...a lot can change in the next 6 hours...but these are my initial feelings...

As far as the weekend goes...looking great! I think MT was concerned about a few isolated showers tomorrow PM...with the lapse rates and any residual moisture...quick perusal of the WRF forecast soundings indicate a convective temp in the upper 80s...tomorrow temps should be about 5 degrees cooler than that...and while there may be some residual mid-level moisture around I think any chance of a spot getting rain is less than 10%...

Temps over the weekend should be in the 80 to 85 range with lows at night in the 60-63 range...and dewpoints in the 50s to near 60...inotherwords perfect evening weather for late June...

Longer range is not perfectly dry...and there are signals to me that at some point we'll get wet again (MCSee) during the middle part of next week...anything more concrete than that has to almost wait till the day before the actual event...I think by now you've seen firsthand how these convective systems really alter things in the atmosphere...and the low about of forecasting ability all of us have in truly detecting exactly who will be affected on a daily basis...signals I (we) can see...specifics not so much from so far away...one look at the doppler storm totals from the overnight/AM activity speaks more clearly than I could...


Rainfall amounts ranged from 0 to about .4" at the NWS reporting stations...a pretty stunning void in the significant rainfall along the state line...

Hey if you're going to be in the Country Club Plaza area on Sunday...I'd like to personnally invite you to the Duck Derby 2008 sponsered by Red Development...this is when we dump 15000+ rubber duckies (they're so cute) into Brush Creek Plaza and whichever duck crosses the finish line first wins a pretty fancy Harley Davidson Motercycle...there are other prizes as well...each duck adoption is $5 and the proceeds go to Childrens TLC...I'm their spokesperson for the event and I've been busy promoting them for the last 2 months...it's gone so well that we're trying to obtain even more ducks for future weekend adoptions...yea!

That's it...will add additional thoughts if needed this afternoon should things not go according to my plan...also as an FYI...any storm should they form does have the potential of being severe...(hail/wind threat)

Joe

Tonight's forecast is by no means cut and dried.  We've been affected by numerous outflow boundaries throughout the day...and tonight it gets even more complex.  Not a lot of time for me to go into details right now...but I'll try to explain in between my on-air hits.

The afternoon outflow boundary lit up across northeast Kansas this afternoon...and has turned into a south-propagating super-cell that's producing strong winds, and torrential rains across the Flint Hills at 10 pm.  However...the low level jet is finally beginning to strengthen on the west end of the storm complex...creating a training area of storms across north-central Kansas. That is the prime location of the 5"-8" rains overnight...similar to the flooding we had two nights ago in north-central Missouri. Meanwhile...the upper level storm is starting to interact with the heat of the high plains...creating an eastward propagating MCS that is beginning to merge with the western end of the Kansas complex.  The result will be a huge MCS that tracks across northern Kansas/southern Nebraska...and right toward us.  Because it takes hours for the low level jet to veer eastward...our best chance for storms in the metro will start around 3 a.m.

Precipitable water is at 1.8"...very thick.  And the Topeka sounding was conditionally unstable...so the stage is set for a good rain event in the morning.  That should kill the chance for the afternoon rains...however...if by some chance the overnight MCS misses us...then the afternoon chances will be better....which is why I left a chance in the forecast for the late afternoon/evening hours tomorrow.

The upper level low rotates by to our northeast on Saturday...and with a dry westerly wind...we could still hit the low 80s....while mid level temperatures drop to +3C by late Saturday. The resulting lapse rates will create updrafts strong enough to take whatever moisture is available...and turn it into spotty late afternoon showers...very hit and miss however...and most of the weekend...if not all for many of you...will be dry.

Looks cool to start next week. Monday morning could be within 2 degrees of a record low!  But true to form..the heat and humidity will return by midweek!

That's is for now! Get ready for a drippy morning rush!  Don will have the latest on all the convective conundrum when you awaken!  Have a fabulous Friday!!

Mike

Major flooding occured late last night and into the morning hours today. Some spots in north-central Missouri picked up close to NINE inches of rain in under 8-10 hours. In fact Linneus, MO picked up 7.10" of rain in FOUR hours!!! I also read a public report of the river stage rising 15 feet in Linn County near Linneus in one hour due to the very heavy rain. Other counties(just to name a few) that were hit with flooding rains last night were Macon, Grundy and Daviess, which include the cities of Atlanta (Macon), Trenton (Grundy) and Gallatin (Daviess). Fortunately we are going to see a slightly drier pattern for the next couple of days with less of a concern for an organized rain event. We are going to have a very warm and humid airmass in place(highs in the 90s, dewpoints in the 70s) and during the peak heating of the day is when we will see our best chance for showers/storms to pop up just about anywhere(only about a 20-30% chance at best). This will hopefully give most spots a chance to dry out until late on Friday. Friday night is when we'll see our next chance for more widespread and heavy rain to move through the viewing area. This next front should move through late on the day Friday and linger through the first half of our Saturday. By Saturday afternoon we should be dry and see cooler temperatures for highs in the lower to mid 80s.

Click here to see the latest flood watches/warnings

Click here to see the latest river flooding information

Besides flooding concerns we are also going to have our first real dose of hot weather for the summer. Today was the first day of 2008 where we saw temperatures at or above 90 degrees in the metro. The last time we saw 90 degrees was September 21, 2007. Highs average this time of the year are around 86 in Kansas City and we are expecting lower to mid 90s for the rest of the week's high temperatures. Couple that with very high dewpoints and the heat index is going to become an issue for the rest of the week. Heat indices should reach closer to the 95-100 degree range the next two afternoons before we see some relief with "cooler" air for the weekend. For those of you who want to know what exactly the heat index is click here.

Click here to calculate the heat index

One other little tidbit of information before I leave you for the day...the next "temperature mark" to meet will be 95 degrees...which could be a possibility as well later this week for parts of the viewing area. I went back and looked at 2007's data and found the first 95 degree day of the year in 2007 was July 17th and the last time we saw 95 was September 4th, 2007.

Enjoy the rest of your Wednesday!!!

-Karli

First of all, the storms tonight are forming on the eastern edge of the mid-level "cap".  10,000 ft. temperatures are approaching 10C (50 degrees F)...but more importantly the winds in the lower atmosphere are increasing from 3,000 to 15,000 feet...helping to slowly shove the storms off to our northeast...and shutting down the rain chances for the rest of the night here in the metro.  Areas just to our northeast will see storms regenerate along the edge of the cap for most of the night. The areas involved are generally 45 miles north and east of downtown Kansas City....where mid level temperatures will be slower to warm up...but by morning...most of the storms should be at least 100 to 120 miles northeast of KC.

For the rest of the week...until Friday night...the "cap" will be holding pretty strong...so our storm chances will be pretty low, in spite of building heat.  I went for 89 tomorrow...but you will likely see a few 90s on bank thermometers...and downtown may hit 90 for the first time tomorrow. Heat index readings will be near 95 tomorrow..and up to near 100 on Friday.

The new model runs bring the Friday night wave in a bit quicker...so storms could fire as early as 7-10 pm Friday night...and be gone by Saturday morning. That wave would bring dewpoints down, and cool temperatures briefly for Saturday...but with building heights, and drier air...Sunday should jump right back into the upper 80s.

Longer term trends would suggest a near normal July.  Precipitation will still run a bit above normal,  but it may not be well reflected at KCI.  Take June for instance...KCI has had 3.78 for the month as of this evening...while Raymore has had 9.9" and Warrensburg has picked up 17.6" of rain in June.  The upper ridge will try to build in at times...then back off...keeping a threat of mainly nocturnal/early morning storms in play....a fairly typical summertime pattern.  High dewpoints...and green grass will keep temps close to normal. So our overall cooler than normal year will continue to dominate.  June will end up above normal...but not by much.  The sea water anamolies in the Pacific would not support a sturdy and persistent ridge yet...so this summer...while pretty warm at times...does not look to be a barn burner...unless somtheing weird happens pretty soon...it should turn out to be a pretty mild summer, with the main concern being the potential for more flooding from the nocturnal MCS pattern.

Sorry for the late blog...the weather prevented me from going too indepth tonight. Active storms are still going stron to our northeast at 10:50 pm....and will take several more hours for them to scoot out of our viewing area.

Have a great Wednesday...and be prepared for the 94 degree heat index!  Summer is here!


Mike

All quiet in the area today as expected...lots of sun and once again low dewpoints...got to say it's pretty unusual for late June to have 3-4 straight days with dewpoints in the 50s...that's been the case lately but things are going to be changing as a real dose of summer heat heats the area...nothing extreme but our days of tracking when the 1st 90 degree day may be ending...as soon as WED...if not by THU...Evan Bookbinder from EAX had a great nugget of information from the AM discussion...here it is...

AN INTERESTING TIDBIT. THE FACT THAT WE HAVE NOT YET HIT 90 DEGREES
IN KANSAS CITY IS NOT AS RARE AS ONE MIGHT EXPECT. IN FACT...SINCE
RECORDS BEGAN IN 1888...THERE HAVE BEEN 11 OCCURRENCES WHERE 90
DEGREES WAS NOT REACHED UNTIL AFTER JUNE 23RD...MOST RECENTLY IN
2004 WHERE 90 DEGREES WAS NOT REACHED UNTIL JULY 11TH! MUCH LIKE
THIS YEAR...UNUSUALLY WET WEATHER KEPT THE MERCURY DOWN INTO THE
EARLY SUMMER.

So lets talk about tonight's situation...we'll stay quiet through midnight or so...but after that all bets are off as a rapid intensification of a low level jet...poking winds of close to 30-40 kts will be poking into NE KS and NW MO...this, like last night to the west, should result in rapid t/storm development...there is also a weak feature showing up in the visible pictures in western KS that may be a weak vort max that could enhance the storm chances later tonight...as they for the storms should move ESE to Eastwards...so the area that they form will be critical in determining how much activity we get here...keep in mind that the storms last night dumped a ton of rainfall in some areas...2-3" so there is the possibility of locally heavy rainfall later tonight into tomorrow early AM...

Then there is the issue of tomorrow PM...as a warm front/outflow may be straddling the I-70 corridor and lifting northwards...again tomorrow PM forecast is VERY conditional on the status of instability/sunshine/boundaries etc...but there is the possibility of severe storms and maybe even a couple of tornados somewhere in the area...reason being while the speed shear with height isn't overly large...IF the warm front is close...that means there will be enhanced directional shear...so that IF any storms fire up in the later PM hours...and they encounter the boundary the may rotate a bit more and create a spin-up...DH and I were talking about these chances today and the WRF is being aggressive with the helicity forecast from the 12Z data...so it's something that needs to be watched...I've felt for the last few weeks that we may get one more busy severe weather hit this month...we'll see if tomorrow pans out or not...again part of the issue is dependent on events in the early AM hours...

After this...warm humid weather expected for the rest of the work week before another nice front pushes in later FRI...with storm chances and a brief hit of cooler/drier air to kick off the weekend with dewpoints perhaps back into the 50s briefly...before the heat and humidity return later SUN and the week of the 30th!

I'll keep an eye on things for you tonight!

I'll leave you with the last words from Al the hippy, dippy weatherman who on his last weathercast said the immortal words..."the weather will continue to change for a long long time..." RIP George Carlin

Joe

Another small research project just completed. This one, we focused on the years of 1950 thru 2007 and we looked at the precipitation for the months of January thru May and compared that to the temperatures of June thru August. Our thinking was that if we had a wet January thru May, then we would have a cool June thru August and just the opposite if it was a dry January thru May. Ideally we would have been able to do this for the whole Kansas City area, but the only data available that goes back that far is from KCI. So all of the following results are specific to KCI.

 

First we needed to know what the climatological averages were for precip and temp. For precipitation at KCI: January 1.15in.; February 1.31in.; March 2.44in.; April 3.88in.; May 5.39in. That makes the average precipitation for January thru May 14.17in. For temperature at KCI: June 83.9ºF; July 88.8ºF; August 87.1ºF. Therefore the average June thru August temperature 86.6ºF.

 

After sitting down to look at the compiled data, we noticed how messy it was and how erratic and random everything seemed. It turned out that 7 years had a wet January thru May followed by cooler June thru August. 19 years had a dry January thru May followed by a warmer June thru August. So out of the 58 years that we looked at 26 of those years were right with our hypothesis. But 19 separate years did not line up with out hypothesis. Either a dry January thru May led to a cooler June thru August or a wet January thru May led to a warmer June thru August. The remaining years contained either normal precipitation or normal temperatures and therefore could not be counted as either with our hypothesis or not with our hypothesis. So it seems that our hypothesis, at least for KCI has failed. However, a problem lies in the fact that KCI’s precipitation does not accurately represent the precipitation of the entire metro area where the temperature does. It can be said that the high from day to day at KCI is more or less the high for the whole KC area, give or take a degree or two. But the amount of precipitation, either in the form of rain or snowfall, varies significantly over the area. KCI may get hammered with 8 inches of snow where downtown only get 4 inches and Olathe get 1 inch. So, as you can see, a problem lies in the precipitation fields of our data. We could correct that, to some degree, if we had precipitation data points for multiple areas around the Kansas City area. So while our hypothesis has failed with KCI data, it is possible that it would pass if we could somehow look at the precipitation for the area as a whole.

 

On a side note, while I had the data in front of me, I decided to take a look at the number of wet and dry first five months as well as the number of warm and cool summers. In the 58 years we have been looking at, 20 of them had wetter than average January thru May and 36 of them had drier January thru May. Something of notice, in the years 1968 thru 1989, KCI experienced several years of dry spells followed by a set of years that were wetter than average. And it would alternate back and forth between dry and wet; dry then wet, dry then wet, then dry again. Overall, it seems that KCI is more often drier than average than it is wet. Now looking at temperatures in June thru August, 20 years were cooler than average at KCI and 27 were warmer. So KCI is more often warmer than the average. There were several consecutive years where summers were either warmer or cooler than average. 1952 thru 1957, and 2002 thru 2007 (exception of 2004) were two sets of years where a noticeable streak of warmer summers occurred. And 1992 thru 1998 (exception of 1994) saw a streak of years with cooler than average summers.

 

By the way…R-Dub, I’m working on your idea next.

Chris