Slowly getting warmer & another storm next weekend

Welcome to Monday and although it may be a little tough getting going this morning, maybe this will help. A warm up is in the forecast!! Okay, so it's not 70s like some of you have been asking for, but 40s and maybe if we are lucky, 50s. We've had this cold weather now for a solid week. You might recall, it was last Monday when the front came in and dropped our temperatures by 40-50 degrees.

Snow reports as of 10 a.m. Monday

The weekend snow was a little earlier than normal, but it's not unheard of to have snow in November. Dodge City with 2.1 inches of snow and Wichita with 1.8 inches set records for yesterdays date. Probably the most surprising to me was the last time Wichita had 1.8" or more this early in the season was back in 1974. 

Pattern for Thursday, Nov. 20

Looking ahead now, the pattern will start to change by Wednesday/Thursday. This huge, cold airmass is going to pull away to the north and east and allow for our temperatures to start climbing once again. We should see 40s throughout most of the week, but some 50s may sneak in for a day or so. Our warmest day should be Thursday.

Active weather for next weekend

There are two branches of the jet stream we have to keep an eye on. The north one (called the polar jet) and the southern branch (called the sub-tropical jet) are factors we consider in making a forecast. At the end of the week, the sub-tropical jet is going to be quite active with a couple different systems sliding through. The first one (arriving Thursday/Friday) isn't going to do much for us other than bring in some clouds. The second one brings a chance for rain showers to the area by Saturday/early Sunday. The unseasonably cold air will have moved away, so it's very unlikely that we would change the forecast to include some snow for the weekend. We are also not likely to see the kind of temperatures we've had for the last week for awhile either. 

Thanks for all of the great weather/snow pictures from over the weekend. Here is a link to some of the pictures if you missed them on the air: http://www.kwch.com/news/local-news/29748314

And of course Millie... making her first tracks in the snow this year too!!