A very WEAK cold front has moved into the area, switching our winds more from a southerly direction, and more towards a northerly direction. this is allowing somewhat cooler air to build down through North MO and taking temperatures down a few notches off there highs over the past couple of days (95-100). We should run 3-5 degrees cooler in the metro...about 7-10 degrees cooler in N MO and really seeing little change down towards the S of KC for the rest of the afternoon. As of 1PM...KCI is @ 88 degrees and downtown is at 91 degrees. Compared to 24 hours ago...those numbers are down 1 and 2 degrees respectively. But the dewpoints are up about 3-5 degrees so it actually "feels" worse when you factor in the heat index. Speaking of temperatures check out a few of the records tied or broken yesterday...

The front is running out of steam as we speak. It should press a bit farther southwards but essentially stall and start falling apart in the southern part of the viewing area. There will be an opportunity for some very isolated storm development towards the S/SW of the downtown vicinity later this afternoon. I looked outside and there are absolutely no clouds along the frontal boundary. A look at the satellite pictures early this afternoon reveal that there is some post frontal cloud cover developing across areas north of the metro. You can see them here...a loop reveals they're lifting towards the ENE at the present time.

Temperatures north of the boundary are actually closer to 80 right now...across the IA/MO border area.

As far as weekend storm chances go...again maybe something very isolated later this PM (10% chance). Then tomorrow AM I'll be tracking storms that should develop across Western Nebraska tonight. They will then roll towards the east and increase in coverage...eventually turning towards the SE. The timing of the SE movement will determine our higher rain chances in the metro. IF they turn more SEwards earlier then our chance of storms increases during the first part of the day. IF that turn is delayed or the coverage isn't as great and they pass us by towards the NE, then I can see a scenario that we don't get action here int he KC area till later in the day/evening which would potentially impact the fireworks tomorrow night. I'm leaning towards the former solution with the potential for storms/rain to keep temperatures cooler than what I'm forecasting right now.

We should jump back into the 90-95 degree heat by MON-TUE witht eh humidity values that we're used to in this part of the country. WED and THU still look suspicious to me for the potential of MCS activity through the Plains states. Impossible at this point to figure the details out on that scenario(s)

Kristy, our new weather intern, who attends IA State did some research for me with our updated climate records going back to the 1880s...I asked here to go through the last week of (June 24th-30th) and the 1st week of July (1st-7th) and calculate the number of 60/70/80/90/100+ days that have occurred. We'd then put them into a pie chart and show that information on the air. It also was beneficial to allow us not to forecast 100 degree heat this past week. 1) statistically it's rare 2) dewpoints were going to be too high 3) the foliage was too green. Here is what she came up with...we'll start with the last week of June...

Now notice the subtle changes for the 1st week of July...

We go from 83% to 85% probabilities of having days in the 80s/90s. The past occurrences of 100+ goes from 4 to 5%...we did do some rounding so the total numbers are close to 100%.


I love that type of information...and it's fun to show.

That'll do it for the afternoon. Try and stay cool and hopefully any future storms won't affect the fireworks displays for the next several nights...

Joe