September outlook - rainfall totals

September and October can be very interesting months as we begin to see the atmosphere going into wild transitions. Our normal high temperatures at the beginning of the month are upper 80s, but drop rather significantly by the end of the month to the 70s.

Early September:

Temperatures are going to start hot as a high pressure system moves right over Kansas, but then weakens quickly. A cold front may slip through here on Tuesday and help to bring temperatures back down, but most areas will have near to above normal temperatures in the first week. We don't expect very much rain in our first week of September. Biggest rains will happen east of our area (and northeast too)

Mid September:

My expectation is that we will have a great deal of back and forth in temperatures. A couple of warm days followed by strong cold fronts. There are no big heat waves that I'm looking at, but we will have more 80s coming to the area. And rainfall doesn't look overly heavy on a large scale, but we should have some decent chances through mid September.

Late September:

If the longer range models are correct, some much cooler weather may show up during the second half of September. The overall weather pattern is hinting at a big trough of low pressure in the central and eastern US, which would allow for cooler than normal weather to slip south from Canada. So we may have some really nice weather late in September. 

Rainfall (from Thursday night/Friday morning)
Hill City: 1.87"
Winfield: 1.72"
Salina: 1.12"
Clay Center: 1.05"
Wichita (Eisenhower): 0.86"
Hutch: 0.81"
Minneapolis: 0.73"
Concordia: 0.63"
Russell: 0.53"
KWCH Studio: 0.40"
Hays: 0.37"
Medicine Lodge: 0.36"
Garden City: 0.13"

August rain records & Labor Day storm threat

This has been an amazing month of August for rainfall. We still have areas of the state that need rain, but we have several areas that now need some dry weather again. What a strange setup this month.

Goodland:
More than 6.37" above normal in August. It's the wettest August in more than 20 years and it's not over yet. Just another .50" or so would rival 1st place, so let's see what happens later this week.

Salina:
Running about 4.50" above average, it's currently the 3rd wettest August to date. The wettest August looks to be a rainfall amount of 13.75", so we have plenty of room to go before we would be getting close.

Wichita: Despite being almost 4.5" above normal for the month, we are still just in 10th place for wettest August. However, if we would get to 8" for the month, that would be enough to bring us into 5th place. So we will see what happens later this week.

Next feature to watch:

Another cold front should drop into the area either Thursday night or Friday. The timing is still being worked out among the different computer models, but I'm think we could begin to see storms in northern Kansas Thursday night. The rest of us should get in on some of the action Friday. Heaviest rainfall should take place Friday, which will keep temperatures in the 70s for much of the state starting the weekend. Plan accordingly if you are thinking about camping. I do expect thunderstorms, but severe chances are questionable right now. Almost all of the significant rains should be out by Saturday mid-morning.

Weekend rain potential and Amazon fire scope

More rain is coming! And it looks like it will be here to impact the weekend forecast. But some areas of Kansas are so dry that you might not care that it's arriving on the weekend.

Next batch - arriving Friday night:

Here's the area with the highest rain chance Friday evening/overnight. It's basically west of a Hays to Pratt line. Eventually, by daybreak Saturday, some of the showers will be coming into central/south central Kansas.

Saturday: Morning showers will be scattered about the area and then another batch of rain should get going into Saturday night.

The arrows above show where the highest rain chances should setup for Saturday evening/night. Will this get far enough east to leave us dry for Sunday? That's what we are looking at now. Total rainfall from the weekend could look like this:

Have you heard about the Amazon fires/smoke:

Mid July

National news is covering the Amazon fires and how bad the smoke is when viewed from space. Just look at this comparison. One image is from mid July when fires were present, but the smoke was minimal.

Now in late August, the smoke is absolutely taking over the air in Brazil. I've labeled where there are clouds and where you can see smoke. The orange dots represent the hot spots as viewed from a particular satellite that crosses this area two times a day. The black wedges shown in the images is just part of the satellite and has nothing to do with the fires. Why there are so many fires down there remains very controversial, but hopefully things get turned around soon. Its reported the Amazon supplies roughly 20% of the world's oxygen.

Hot now, but look what is looming next week!

Will this be the last shot at 100s for Kansas this summer? There will likely be several spots up around 100° this afternoon (Tuesday), but most of you have probably heard by now, it's about to change. Here's the latest count on triple digit temperatures around different parts of the state.

Look at this stat:

That's right, the average last 100 for south central Kansas typically comes on August 19th, so it's getting to that time of year where this sort of thing should be ending soon. However, we still have a strong chance of seeing some 100s again Sunday or Monday (Aug. 25/26). That should be the last chance for us to see triple digit temperatures. Once we get to September, it's increasingly LESS likely that we will get that hot again.

Thunderstorm chances throughout the rest of the week:

There should be several small waves of storms coming across the Plains. The first wave will hit Wednesday PM/night, with another one coming Thursday and finally, Friday. I don't expect we will have a bunch of severe weather, but this kind of setup can lead to storms producing some high winds. There have been too many episodes of that lately, so just be aware of that concern. 

And temperatures later next week will be cooling down for much of the central and northern Plains. What might be our first taste of fall is now beginning to show up on some maps. Even the humidity could break for us mid to late next week. That's right... we could see lower temperatures AND humidity in just another 8 or 9 days. 

Labor Day weekend preview:

We are less than 2 weeks away and if you are wondering about the weather, it is looking like a decent weekend of temperatures. Early signs point toward cooler than normal weather, which would likely mean highs in the 80s. Chances for rain aren't very clear right now, but in the weather center, we believe it's nearly impossible to go through a holiday weekend, in summer, and not have it storm at least ONE of the 3 days. Now that's not scientifically proven, but it sure seems to be that way more times than not. I'll keep looking for some clearer signs of what it will do and let you know. In the meantime, you can plan on it NOT being overly hot for the extended weekend.

Late August outlook

Just getting back into the swing of things after a week off with family. It was the first time in my life to visit the Pacific Northwest. Everyone has always told me how beautiful the scenery is up there, and they were definitely not lying. It was nice to have some sunshine while we were there and even chances to enjoy some GREAT visibility.

Here's a view of Mt. Rainier from my airplane window seat.

And a view of Snoqualmie Falls (just east of Seattle)

The weather was warm there (highs in the 80s), but nothing like Kansas heat and humidity. ☺

Rainfall numbers as we pass the halfway point in August:

The rainfall lately has been a little strange. It's been very heavy in some areas, while other places are flat out getting missed. It goes that way sometimes. I don't think anybody would've guessed that Goodland would have such high numbers at this point in the month, but northwest Kansas has been in the right place recently with several waves of storms pushing through. Even Salina has dealt with some flooding in recent weeks, so things aren't in too bad of shape there.

Rainfall numbers from June 1st through August 16th: (remember that meteorological summer began on June 1st)

The next 8-10 days should be rather hot for much of the central Plains:

The heat dome is trying so hard to hold on in the central and southern Plains, so it's not looking like August is going to end on a cool note. We are still about a month away from the official start to fall and normal high temperatures are still in the low 90s. So what's being forecast in the next week shouldn't be a huge surprise. I don't think it will be record setting but we certainly have some hot weather to get through before our next cool down.
And the following week (last full week in August) also looks very warm/hot - several areas just east of Kansas will begin cooling down in the last week of the month, but my expectations are that Kansas will continue to be on the hot side.

Rainfall: The areas getting heavy rains lately are likely to still be in the running for more precipitation over the next couple of weeks. With the high pressure setting over southern Colorado, that will keep most of the bigger rains just northeast of our area.

Did you see the updated drought monitor? The area has expanded from the previous map that came out August 8th. Some of the areas along I-70 have been removed from drought, but we are now moving into the second category of drought for southwest Kansas, considered "moderate" drought.

Drought - Aug. 8

Most recent drought map - out this week

Have a great weekend. Thanks for spending a few minutes here.

Rainfall totals & what's next

Rainfall totals shown here are through 7 a.m. Thursday morning. As of this writing, there's still a great deal of heavy rainfall happening east of I-135 that keeps moving east. But more rain is yet to move this way in the coming days, so please keep that in mind if you haven't received what you were hoping for.

Severy (SE KS): 3.80"

Salina: 3.17"

Goodland: 2.51"

Coffeyville: 2.13"

Hill City: 1.69"

Russell: 0.64"

Hutchinson: 0.47"

Garden City: 0.47"

Geneseo: 0.47"

Great Bend: 0.36"

Hays: 0.28"

Newton: 0.24"

Smith Center: 0.08"

Jabara Airport: 0.03"

Wichita Radar

Goodland Radar

The images above are estimates from Wichita and Goodland radar sites. It's pretty clear to see the biggest rains went along I-70 and then east of I-135.

So here's what's coming next:

The chance for storms tonight (Thu. Night) should setup over southern Kansas (if we get many storms at all). The rain will NOT be as widespread as recent rounds have been. But a few areas may get some more rain into early Friday.

Saturday Night: 

This time frame should have more rain and storms, some of which could be heavy. It's been looking like this batch of storms should cross western Kansas and move into northern Kansas by early Sunday. The areas LEAST likely to get in on the heavy rain will be southern Kansas. Amounts of 1-3" look very possible.

Very unsettled this week with the ring of fire

Thanks for spending a few minutes here on the blog catching up on what should be a busy week with storms across the Plains. Some of you keep hitting me up on Facebook and Twitter begging for rain. The fact of the matter is that there are several places that need rain. If you didn't see the drought map that was released last week, here's another look.

We are seeing a decent sized area in central Kansas in "abnormally dry", which is the lowest drought category. And that area could be wiped out in the coming weeks with rain on the way. A good 2 or 3 inch rain would put a huge dent in that area. This map will get updated on Thursday.

What is the "ring of fire" - A viewer wrote to me Monday night and said it was something I was making up and that the ring of fire only pertained to volcanoes in the Pacific. Here's what he is referring to.

What I was referencing is the setup of high pressure in the Rockies and storms that nearly go all the way around the high. That's the "ring of fire" in meteorology and it's pretty common at this time of year when the monsoon moisture is coming up through the southwest. This is what will keep our weather active over the next week, perhaps even longer. If you can imagine the winds going clockwise around the "H", most of our active weather will be coming from the east side of the Rockies. It then encounters this very humid air and storms just love to feed off the moisture.

Highest rain chances: Should come from Wednesday night - Friday night. This is when I expect many areas to get the rain we keep talking about. What falls outside of that particular time frame probably won't amount to that much and will be very isolated.

Between now and the end of the week, several computer models give much of Kansas some rain. Now I won't promise that you're going to get the amount you want or need, but at least the chances cover more areas this week than they did last week. Here's the latest look at one forecast models projection of rain between now and Saturday morning:

Perseid Heads Up:

It's one of the better meteor showers that we see during the year. It is expected to peak on the night of August 12th, but you might try and get out this weekend to see a bit of the show. The moon won't be setting until just before dawn, so some of the faint meteors might be washed out by moonlight. So viewing might be better on the morning of the 10th or 11th because we will have a couple of very dark hours at that time.

Rainfall amounts - this is how it goes sometimes

Here are some rainfall amounts through early Friday morning.

Winfield: 4.87"
Andover: 1.70"
Minneapolis: 1.69"
Concordia: 1.25"
Jabara Airport (Wichita): 1.22"
Belleville: 1.06"
Salina: 0.87"
Newton: 0.72"
KWCH Studio: 0.33"
Goodland: 0.16"
Smith Center: 0.08"
Dodge City: 0.06"
Wichita (Eisenhower): 0.04"
Hutch: 0.02"
Great Bend: 0.01"
Russell: Trace

Just look at the two images below. They are radar estimates from Wichita and Goodland showing where the heaviest rain has been over the last few nights. Isn't it amazing how perfect the heavy rain followed I-135? It's clearly the dividing line for central and Eastern Kansas.

The split from a bunch of rain to not much at all is pretty amazing as we compare numbers today. Chances for scattered rain and thunder should continue for most of the area today. It's unlikely that southwest Kansas will see very much rain today, but the rest of the area will have chances. Have a good weekend and enjoy the 80s while we have them. It's going to warm up some next week.

Some rain & cooler weather for all

It looks like we WILL get some rain to move our way and temperatures are going to cool off statewide. This comes after a couple of hot days for our area, but not as hot as it was just a couple weeks back. Just look at the major rain that fell overnight in Eastern Kansas. We knew this might be a  problem and some county roads are reported washed out south of Lawrence. Just look at the radar estimates from Eastern Kansas.

Rain chances tonight/Friday:
Highest chances will be along and north of I-70 later this evening (Thursday), but more rain should develop along and east of the Flint Hills. It continues to look like heavy rains are likely along and east of the Flint Hills. The models have all been very consistent in producing 2-5 inch rainfall amounts for eastern Kansas. And flash flood watches are posted for that reason.

Friday will be scattered with the rain, but the chances basically go all day. And even if you aren't getting rain, there's a good chance much of the area will be socked in with clouds that will help to keep the temperatures down. The scattered rains will gradually shift south throughout the day and should end from north to south by Friday night. I'm expecting some .25-.50" amounts (but much heavier off to our east)

Enjoy the below normal temperatures throughout the weekend because next week will heat back up a bit for much of the Plains. It's unlikely that we will have triple digits, but it will be warmer.