December snow, rain, and warmer next week

Rain.... finally... in southern California

Hope everyone is having a nice week so far. How exciting to see it raining in California again. That's where most of the national weather attention has been focused. More showers in the forecast for them today. They really need a steady diet of moisture to cut into the historic drought. Roughly 12 inches is needed to wipe out the drought. But they don't want that all at one time of course.

Forecast for rain Thursday night into Friday

Rain chances are in the forecast for Kansas too. It won't be all over the state though. Right now, forecast models are showing around .25 to maybe .50 for south central and southeast Kansas. It won't be much in central Kansas, but there should be a few showers early Friday. And it's a relatively fast moving system, so it should be gone by mid-late Friday afternoon.

Average December snow

December (on average) is the snowiest month for Wichita, but it comes in 3rd place for Dodge City and Goodland. Much of the state has an average snowfall this month between 4 and 6 inches. During the bitter cold back in mid November, we had our first flakes of the season (even thought it wasn't very much) It's going to be a long time before we get another chance to have measurable snow.

Weather pattern (Thursday, Dec. 10-11)

Look at what is happening next week with the weather pattern. A storm (low pressure system) is likely going to setup just east of us Monday - Wednesday. It will mostly likely cool us down for the start of next week (Dec. 8), but it's whats behind the storm that is catching my attention. There could be a big push of warm air going all the way into the northern Plains during the middle of the week. It's not completely out of the question for 60 to maybe 70 degree weather to show up in the Dakotas. It will be unusual to say the least, but I'm wondering if we will see more record warmth before the next blast of cold air hits Kansas (still likely to be more than a week away) This will be something to watch for our second full week of December.