May outlook for the Plains

May is upon us and this tends to be a rough month for severe weather in the Plains. The month of April was unusually quiet with respect to severe storms and we are now in 4th place for the latest spring tornado. You can see the list and by all means, I'm not trying to jinx anything. Given all that is going on right now in our world, we can appreciate the fact that Mother Nature isn't sending us for cover every other day.

April was a disappointment for rainfall in much of the state. I had hoped that we see a few more systems roll through, but the ones that did had spotty rains.

Here are some takeaways from what I see in May:

• Severe storms won't be a huge issue for Kansas in the first few weeks of the month
• Higher severe weather chances may show up in mid to late May, and perhaps even later
• Temperatures: Although the month starts with above normal temperatures, we are going to go through a cool spell to even things out. So the month as a whole should have temperatures "near" normal

• Precipitation ... looks near to below normal for our area. I don't see any way (unless a miracle comes through) that we will be "above" average on precipitation. We will get some rainfall, but I don't think this will be a wetter than normal month.

The cool spell mentioned above is likely coming over Mother's Day weekend. And I think it will last for at least 3-5 days at the most. Will there be another frost? I wouldn't expect it to be on a widespread basis, but some areas of northern Kansas could be close. This is something to watch in the coming days. 

I would also expect our better rain chances to come in the later half of the month too. This is when the pattern begins to shift into a more favorable setup for some heavier rainfall. 

The image below only gives us a rough idea on potential moisture for May. Some of the numbers may look exciting to you if you haven't been getting rain, but in truthfulness, most of those are slightly below average. It will be interesting to see how this works out. 

Remember last May - we had tremendous flooding in some areas and even the Turnpike was closed for awhile due to water over the road. That's not going to happen this month.