More rain; active week

Rainfall amounts (24 hr. estimates through 7 a.m.)

Another weekend comes and goes and now here we are into the month of June. It's a month when most farmers will harvest the wheat crop (if drought didn't consume your crop yet) and it's also one of the wettest months (on average) for some areas of the state. Good news is that we start the month with rain and we have several chances coming up in the next 7-10 days of more moisture. This will hopefully keep the grass green and allow for some hay production to take place in our state as well.

24 hr rain estimates through 7 a.m.

24 hr rain estimates through 7 a.m.

Taking a look back at what happened last night with the storms that rolled through and the rainfall amounts that fell across the area. In the absence of extreme hail stones, the radar does a good job of estimating the rainfall that occurred over the state. Two areas where the rain was a little heavier and more widespread was across north central Kansas and then another area around Medicine Lodge and just west of there (click on the image to make it large and use the key at the top to determine some of the amounts). Training thunderstorms (the kind that move over the same area time after time) produced some big rainfall numbers late last night and very early this morning. In some cases, there maybe some actual rainfall amounts of over 4 inches in those areas. Wow! We haven't had rainfall like that in southern Kansas in a very long time. This part of the state has been near the top of the drought monitor for months. Now we need to spread that out to other areas of southern and western Kansas.

24 Hr. Measured Rainfall (ending at 7 a.m.)
Russell: 0.49"
Salina: 0.51"
Hutch: 0.58"
Jabara Airport: 1.10"
Wichita: 0.55"
Winfield: 1.27"
Newton: 0.66"
Great Bend: 1.03"
Hill City: 0.03"
Dodge City: 0.67"
Garden City: 0.13"
Medicine Lodge: 0.97"
Hays: 0.19"
Pratt: 0.12"

Looking at our chances this week in detail, here's what I come up with.

Monday afternoon:  An isolated storm near Wichita and areas to the south and east of there
Early Tuesday morning: Spotty storms in northwest Kansas (near Goodland and Colby)
Tuesday afternoon/evening: Big storms - including severe - likely near the KS/NE state line (moderate risk out for possible tornadoes in Nebraska)

Wednesday night: More storms likely, especially in western Kansas and then moving east into early Thursday morning (impacting central and southern KS)
Thursday:  A.M. storms - scattered- winding down during the day. More likely Thursday night
Friday:  Widespread storms likely, especially heading into the evening and night.

Details to come throughout the week on possibility of severe storms.