No end in sight for the busy weather pattern

It's been unreal to see just how many storms continue to slam the West coast. It feels very much like an El Nino setup - where one storm continues to follow another. Drought continues to dramatically improve, and when this is all over, some areas could be drought-free or back to the lowest level of drought (in California and much of the West coast). 

You can see the low pressure systems lined up and ready to move into the West. Each one behaving in similar ways, heavy rain for the coast and major mountain snows for the Sierras. 

Look at some of the amounts out of California:

And the forecast through January 18th continues to show more rain and snow will be headed into an already drenched West coast. It's also nice to see the snows piling up in Utah and Colorado. If you read the last blog update, you know that's the area that will drain into Lake Powell and Mead. Some experts claim that in order to fully restore lake levels, there would need to be three years of average moisture (with no water being used). Right now, lake levels are up, but only by a slight margin.

So far, Kansas hasn't been on the receiving end of the heavier moisture, but the storm track does remain very active. There's a potential system coming through Sunday night, but unless there's some big shift in the track, it doesn't look like it has all the ingredients to produce much moisture. The biggest issue is where the upper-level winds are coming from - mainly out of the desert and NOT from the Gulf of Mexico. Moisture will be limited at best, so rain chances (and amounts) are pretty slim.

What will follow that system is another storm tracking into the area around Jan. 17/18. That one may have more impact with rain and snow. It drops much farther south before coming into the Plains, which could help to increase the amounts of moisture we are able to squeeze out of it.

Yet a third system may approach Kansas and surrounding areas late in the week (Jan. 19-21).

We are still anticipating a major flip in the weather with much colder air headed back to the Plains late in the month. February could be quite chilly too if early indications are correct. Just look at the map below - and this is only into the first 5 days of February. There might be a price for all of the mild weather we've had so far in January. 

 Have a great day.