Eyes on potential Barry & a mini heat wave developing

All of the attention will be on a developing tropical system (which will be named Barry) as it strengthens today (Thursday). Anytime a storm gets into the Gulf, there is a chance it could impact Kansas weather either directly or indirectly.

Barry could take a very similar path that Hurricane Isaac took in 2012. Look at the similarities of the two storms.

In 2015, Bill hit the Gulf coast (much farther west than Barry will do), but eventually moved through Oklahoma and just narrowly grazed southeast parts of Kansas.

So Gulf storms are always interesting to watch from a Kansas perspective given the increased chance they could impact our weather. Even though most of them never make it to our state, they can have indirect impacts by causing other weather features to stall in the jet stream (what meteorologists sometimes refer to as "blocking")

Potential mini heat wave next week:

Regardless of what becomes of Barry, several forecast maps are showing an expansion of the heat across the Plains in the second half of next week. If you read the blog from time to time, you've heard me say that our chances of having major heat waves are VERY low. And I still believe that. This isn't going to be a long string of 100s for Kansas, but we might see a few triple digit days if this high pressure camps out right over us.