More rain coming - no heat wave yet

We continue to see some good news regarding ongoing drought in Kansas as we approach late June and even start to look out into mid-July. 

First up, the infamous "heat dome" will remain over northern Mexico right up to the end of June and it should be very weak. Given that, we will continue to see repeated rounds of storms off the high plains of Colorado and right down into Kansas. This is classic summertime - mainly overnight and early morning storms. 

This particular setup should yield more rain for the Plains and the Corn Belt, which might be key timing for some of the fall crop production and yields. Take a look at the predicted rain amounts and see that western Kansas might be on the lower end of the amounts but should still receive some rainfall throughout the last week of June.

And as we've talked about before, the more rain, the better the chances are at avoiding a prolonged heat wave. If you're "dry", you tend to "fry". 

 

Going out further into July, it will be our turn for some hotter weather. Signs are pointing to more 90s and drier days, but I don't expect a major heat wave or a long stretch of no rain.

Most models hint at the upper high pressure, or heat dome, moving back to near Amarillo and resulting in some hotter temperatures and less rainfall as we approach mid-July. This could help to crank up the monsoon over the Desert Southwest and across the Rockies. The upper level winds would keep the higher rain potential off to our west. 

I don't think a prolonged heat wave is in our future for July. There are too many other factors suggesting whatever heat we do get into may very well be brief - broken down by a cold front and some rain. Great news for farmers and those who aren't fans of summer heat and humidity.

June, summer rain, and El Niño

Unofficial summer is here (meteorological summer), running June 1 - August 31st and I've been responding to many emails lately about the rain (or lack thereof) and the incoming super El Niño. Up until mid-May, there was great concern about when the rain would finally come. After all, I had been talking about a shift to "wetter" conditions with the incoming El Niño, but it just wasn't working out that way and week after week passed with no real change.

Let's look at how the water temperatures have changed since early May:

Now June:

The expansion of the warmer water to the west is quite impressive. On average, the water temperatures are .5°C warmer across the area that's monitored for El Nino (which happens to be more than 8 million square miles - mainly south of Hawaii)

And what we are seeing looking deeper into summer and early fall is even more drastic, with the likelihood of a strong El Nino shaping up. In fact, there's even some modeling that suggests this event might challenge the strongest El Nino on record (1997-98), which was one of the first episodes that was measured with satellite technology and studied more extensively.

Below is the 1997-98 El Nino

As we've said before, most strong El Niño patterns favor rain for Kansas. I've spent some time looking back at previous summers with this kind of influence and while not every month was wetter than average, more times than not rainfall was near or above average.

Here's the latest June outlook for rainfall:

And temperatures:

If we put the summer months (June, July, August) into one map, you get this kind of look:

Temperatures:

And rainfall:

I can (and will at some point) post some more images into the fall, but I continue to see signs of rain ahead, so drought will continue to scale back. It wouldn't be a total surprise if some areas of western Kansas fall out of drought altogether, but it will take more time for that to happen. 

Thanks for reading. I hope to have more timely updates this month. Please check back!