More rain coming - no heat wave yet

We continue to see some good news regarding ongoing drought in Kansas as we approach late June and even start to look out into mid-July. 

First up, the infamous "heat dome" will remain over northern Mexico right up to the end of June and it should be very weak. Given that, we will continue to see repeated rounds of storms off the high plains of Colorado and right down into Kansas. This is classic summertime - mainly overnight and early morning storms. 

This particular setup should yield more rain for the Plains and the Corn Belt, which might be key timing for some of the fall crop production and yields. Take a look at the predicted rain amounts and see that western Kansas might be on the lower end of the amounts but should still receive some rainfall throughout the last week of June.

And as we've talked about before, the more rain, the better the chances are at avoiding a prolonged heat wave. If you're "dry", you tend to "fry". 

 

Going out further into July, it will be our turn for some hotter weather. Signs are pointing to more 90s and drier days, but I don't expect a major heat wave or a long stretch of no rain.

Most models hint at the upper high pressure, or heat dome, moving back to near Amarillo and resulting in some hotter temperatures and less rainfall as we approach mid-July. This could help to crank up the monsoon over the Desert Southwest and across the Rockies. The upper level winds would keep the higher rain potential off to our west. 

I don't think a prolonged heat wave is in our future for July. There are too many other factors suggesting whatever heat we do get into may very well be brief - broken down by a cold front and some rain. Great news for farmers and those who aren't fans of summer heat and humidity.

June, summer rain, and El Niño

Unofficial summer is here (meteorological summer), running June 1 - August 31st and I've been responding to many emails lately about the rain (or lack thereof) and the incoming super El Niño. Up until mid-May, there was great concern about when the rain would finally come. After all, I had been talking about a shift to "wetter" conditions with the incoming El Niño, but it just wasn't working out that way and week after week passed with no real change.

Let's look at how the water temperatures have changed since early May:

Now June:

The expansion of the warmer water to the west is quite impressive. On average, the water temperatures are .5°C warmer across the area that's monitored for El Nino (which happens to be more than 8 million square miles - mainly south of Hawaii)

And what we are seeing looking deeper into summer and early fall is even more drastic, with the likelihood of a strong El Nino shaping up. In fact, there's even some modeling that suggests this event might challenge the strongest El Nino on record (1997-98), which was one of the first episodes that was measured with satellite technology and studied more extensively.

Below is the 1997-98 El Nino

As we've said before, most strong El Niño patterns favor rain for Kansas. I've spent some time looking back at previous summers with this kind of influence and while not every month was wetter than average, more times than not rainfall was near or above average.

Here's the latest June outlook for rainfall:

And temperatures:

If we put the summer months (June, July, August) into one map, you get this kind of look:

Temperatures:

And rainfall:

I can (and will at some point) post some more images into the fall, but I continue to see signs of rain ahead, so drought will continue to scale back. It wouldn't be a total surprise if some areas of western Kansas fall out of drought altogether, but it will take more time for that to happen. 

Thanks for reading. I hope to have more timely updates this month. Please check back!

May rain/temperature maps

The month of May is here & usually it is the peak of severe weather season for Kansas. However, April was busy and this statistic regarding the number of tornado and t-storm warnings backs that up:

The focus has clearly been on the eastern half of the state, and more specifically, along and southeast of the Turnpike. Note the quick drop off of storm reports once you get west of Great Bend and Hays. Every cold front that has pushed through hasn't encountered that rich, Gulf humidity until it made it east of I-135. Our tornado count is right around 30 for 2026, which is on track to outpace 2025, but still well below the average of 80 that Kansas expects in a year.

May outlook:

It sure looks like the month overall is drier than average - doubt you'll be surprised by that considering the trends as of late. Here's the updated map:

Even locations that have been wetter in April may be trending drier for the upcoming 30 days (talking about eastern Kansas). 

Temperatures:

I still feel strongly about May overall being slightly cooler than average. One could be concerned that a lack of rain and sub-soil moisture would allow temperatures to soar, but we continue to see signs of cooler air dominating the areas along and east of the Rockies. This doesn't look like record cool, but doubtful that summer heat takes over like it did in March.

Waiting on rain is testing everyone's patience. We continue to talk about the El Nino and a potential shift toward some better potential of rainfall. Our longer range data still shows that for summer and into early fall. It is hard to imagine that when everything lately has gone around us, but I still think a shakeup in the dry pattern is coming. 

Hopefully it is in time for the fall crops, which I would suspect it would be, but we should also note that summer rains can be very scattered, in which case some will be left out. As you well know, our models aren't perfect and their accuracy may have had some recent setbacks, but we continue to dig into the data as best we can to unlock some downstream clues.

Thanks for reading!