The wild ride in February continues

Our first week of February is nearly behind us and what a wild ride with record setting warmth last weekend and now, it seems like winter has a firm grip on the Plains.

This may be a hard pill to swallow, but look at the following maps. The next several weeks look colder than normal (by varying degrees of course). There isn't much hope of getting back to 70 anytime soon, so 50s will have to do for now. In another few weeks, our normal highs will jump to 50.

So here's the outlook for next week:

We are forecasting a storm, which essentially has been on our radar (no pun intended) now for roughly a week. The timing originally looked like Tuesday, but the last couple of days have shifted our confidence toward it being a Wednesday system. We might have a brief round of sprinkles on Tuesday, but the bulk of the moisture comes right in the middle of the week. And it could be heavy too, with the eastern 1/3 of Kansas possibly getting another inch of moisture. 

This first image is for Tuesday afternoon when both systems are forming in the west. You can clearly see two areas, one in the Northwest and another coming through the desert. They should eventually combine for one large system in the Plains.

As the moisture begins to wrap up and depart from the Plains, we get hit with a VERY strong cold front again during the second half of next week. This looks COLD - every bit as cold as the last big blast we saw come through. So winter will be hard to fight off in the coming weeks, but the month of February has looked cold front the start. 

The front then leads us into the outlook shown below. We don't stand much of a chance of warming up for any great length of time until the end of the month. Even then, it doesn't look like 70s at this point in time.