Dry and warm now... and something exciting to wake up to this week

What a nice weekend of weather in Kansas. It started off with some frost and ended with a few showers and storms around the area. We had some wind gusts just over 50 mph reported with the storms Sunday evening.

The next few days will feel a little more like summer with high temperatures creeping back into the 80s (at least through Wednesday) The cooler air is off to the northeast of Kansas, but rest assured, it will be back later in the week.

There's no chance for rain today or tomorrow, and much of Wednesday is looking dry too. Any storms Wednesday evening or night will be east of the Flint Hills and headed into Missouri. One of the main features we are watching this week is Simon, a tropical storm in the Pacific that is going to be coming our way.

Simon on a northeast track later in the week

This path looks similar to Odile that we watched back in September, but you'll probably remember that tropical system ended up not doing much of anything for us here in Kansas. The forecast models are showing moisture heading this way by Thursday, cool Canadian air sinking south Friday, and those ingredients will hopefully work together to produce much needed moisture over southern Kansas by the end of the week. In fact, the long range models are showing some areas getting an inch of rain from Thursday evening - late Friday night. I know parts of the state don't need any more moisture now, but if we don't get it, winter can sometimes be a long, dry period (it's our driest time of the year on average)

Forecast rain for Thursday - 9 p.m. Friday night

There is a total lunar eclipse coming up Wednesday morning (October 8). Totality begins at 5:25 and will last for an hour. Remember, this is when the moon passes through the Earth's shadow (known as the "umbra"). The full eclipse will be visible and just as it comes to an end, the moon will be going down. A lunar eclipse is much more common than a solar eclipse, where the moon passes between the sun and Earth. But there is a solar eclipse that is supposed to happen in 2017.