Rainfall amounts in E NE were generally about .5-1.5", although in the last 7 days that part of the country, SE/E NE and W IA has picked up quite a bit more...
There are some 2-6" totals up there. For us though, after a pretty dry 1st 15 days of the month....25" from 6/1-15...we've actually had a decent amount since...from the 16th through today...3.35" of rain has fallen. Down south the rain has also picked up. At the Jo Co Executive Airport from 6/1-15-.28" Since 6/16 though they've had 3.62" of rainfall. For Downtown KC...from the 6/1-6/15 period a total of 0.0" and since then 2.97". We'll have more opportunities over the next 3 days for additional rainfall.
We've talked for the past couple of days about the drought and the floods going on. There is a saying in the weather world that droughts beget droughts. Basically it means that once a drought has become established, it's very difficult to break through and they continue to fester and expand slowly. In time it does break down though. Remember the SE drought a few years ago, they reversed things and more afterwards. So in time this too will happen in the southern plains. In these situations though there is "feedback" into the atmosphere as the intense heat just continues to bake the soils down there. This in time translates into the mid parts of the atmosphere as large anticyclones (Ridges) develop in start to deviate the jetstream. They can take a normally hot period and make it even more intense. Yesterday Amarillo set a new record high of 109. Not only was it a record for the day...it was their ALL TIME RECORD HIGH. I would've thought that would have been higher, but apparently not 108 was. These records go back to the early 1930s so we're taking into account the dust bowl era as well. Very impressive.
The reason I bring this up is that the upper midwest and northern Rockies are obviously, as illustrated this week in the blog, and in the headlines for months now, is going through the opposite. Much like the ridging tendencies in drought areas there is troffing tendencies in wet areas promoting more wetness and coolness as well. While true cyclones in the summer in the mid levels of the atmosphere are tougher to come by, there is a tendency for the atmosphere aloft to show cooler tendencies. This would in turn create more cold fronts, and/or allow the fronts to penetrate farther southwards than typical.
So essentially you have a battle that shapes up between the ridge and the troffing through the central 1/3rd of the USA. What does this mean for our sensible weather here...to me it means both regimes will control our weather with a nod to the ridging overall. I do like the idea that there will be periods of time when that ridge and the heat really poke our way for awhile. I also like the thoughts that cold fronts will still be able to move our way every so often and knock the edge off the heat for a couple of days before the heat returns again. This also is a set-up for alternating dry and somewhat wet times with an increase in nocturnal t/storm clusters imo.
This coming week, we'll have one cold front move in Monday with perhaps another towards the end of the week. Not bad for the last week of June. Should this still be happening in mid July, I like the chances of us having average to above rainfall for the July/August frame. While temperatures may trend to average to slightly above, I don't believe a repeat of last summers intense heat/dryness is ahead in July/August. Will we hit 100...sure, that's normal, and when that Southern Plains ridge puts the hammer down...105 is not out of the question somewhere this summer. On average we hit 90+ 36 times each year...last year we did it a remarkable 50 times! This year, so far we've hit 90+ 10 times. My feeling is that we'll be ABOVE average in terms of the number of 90 degree days this summer.
So anyway those are my summer time thoughts...if that didn't do it for you, perhaps Tom Hanks doing the weather on a Spanish television network will do it for you.
Joe
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