It's been awhile for 1) seeing some rain out there and 2) me writing a weather blog. I'll take care of #2 first. I spent a week down in Western Texas. We have family down there and interestingly it was where I worked before I came to KC some 17 years or so ago. I hadn't been back there since and I was curious to see how things looked. Needless to say it's changed a lot. Also it was interesting to see the economic boom of sorts in progress down there. We drove around Midland, TX and saw about 6 different $1-2 million homes being built. These things were huge, and would even put the Ward Parkway mansions to shame. Also of interest to me was the mobile home/RV parks which were all filled with expensive RV's supporting all the oil field workers. Even in a tiny town called Monahans, which is dusty and small, sure enough several RV parks were packed to the gills.

Now as far as #1 goes, it's awfully dry out there, but there are some small pockets of convection that have developed, thanks in large part to the remnants of what was Tropical Storm Lee, which came ashore last week along the LA gulf coast. It meandered through the TN Valley then moved up into the OH Valley and for the last couple of days has been retrograding westwards into the MS River Valley. As the storm has been rotating in the counter clockwise manner, small disturbances have also rotated around the edge of the storm and one of those is moving through the region now. This combined with temperatures in the 75-80 range has allowed scattered showers/storms to percolate in the heat of the afternoon. These will die/fade rather quickly as the sun starts to go down. As a matter of fact skies should clear out rather nicely this evening and overnight should again be very comfortable. Tomorrow the rain chance is still somewhat there, but my feeling is that most of the activity might be more confined to the MO side and perhaps shifting a bit more towards the SE of the metro. My feeling is that the activity should be about half of what we're seeing out there right now.

After that the rest of the weekend looks pretty good with a warming trend expected through Sunday and Monday before another more impressive plunge of chillier air moves down towards the region. This may send lows later next week down to the 40-45 range by next Thursday morning...and highs may struggle to get to 70 on WED and or THU...very impressive for this early in the season. By later in the week and next weekend, the potential may increase for at least some scattered showers as we transition from a chilly for September airmass to a more typical mid September airmass.

Meanwhile I've been watching all the weather across the country. In W TX, where I visited, the main item of conversation is the drought, which is as bad there as it's been in decades. Water restrictions are in place, and the landscape/agriculture is struggling mightily. The whole state is a mess as far as this goes and it's not going to get any better any time soon. There may have been some small hope that the tropics would help out a bit with the formation of Nate, but it looks like Nate will pass well tot he south of the state and not help at all. Take a look at the severity of the drought down there...

Meanwhile the opposite situation is occurring in the NE part of the country as a series of storms, Irene/Lee have created tons of rainfall. Here is a map showing the last couple of weeks of rainfall out there. The flooding scenarios are worsening now across the eastern part of PA. Wilkes Barre is having some real issues this afternoon with overtopped levees and record flood stages.

Our lack of moisture is also evident. NOAA btw has estimated the Lee dumped, get this 75 TRILLION gallons of rainfall. Meanwhile in Houston, TX they've had about 11" of rainfall this year, it's no wonder why the city is surrounded by wildfires...

So it's either really dry or really wet. The summer now concluded is also generating headlines because of the heat. check out this map showing the number of 100 degree days across the country. Only VT and NH were spared.

In the Red River area of N TX, you can see the core of the heat over the past 90 or so days ending on 8/31


Well that's about it for my return blog. I'll have updates for you again all weekend long.

Joe