Historic winds and a heat wave is about to begin

Good Friday morning! What a busy couple of mornings with destructive winds and major tree damage. Trash day for me is always a windy day it seems like. I picked my dumpster up 3 or 4 times yesterday. The measured wind gust in Wichita of 80 mph is going down as the 8th strongest wind gust for the city. Here's the list of top wind gusts for the city. Interesting to me that so many are from July.

We have to be on the lookout for more storms today as the potential is there for damaging winds, heavy rainfall, and some hail (sound familiar?) Storms in Nebraska will move to the southeast. The chances should get out of Kansas later tonight. Of course, it's not certain everyone will have rain and storms, but be prepared. These storms recently have just had a ton of rain in them, nearly blinding anyone driving through them.

Heat Wave Watch! The pattern is getting ready to shift on us as we continue through the dog days of summer. It's known as the "dog days" because of a star that rises at the same time the sun does. This is, on average, the hottest point of the year with the average high getting to 93/94 degrees. So even though some of us will moan and groan about the extended forecast, it is summer! The H acts like a shield and deflects most thunderstorm chances around our state. So we won't have too many thunderstorms to track (after Friday).

But how long will this last? I've been studying the long range trend and it sure looks like by the end of the month, the pattern begins shifting around again. Yes... we could have 12-14 days of this hot, boring weather. Once the big H begins moving back to the west, we should see a return to some active weather with less heat in the Plains. Hopefully your AC is ready for a workout! Have a good weekend.