Meteor shower this week AND a shifting pattern

It's one of the better meteor showers of the year and it will peak Wednesday night/Thursday morning. The good news is that the moon will be nearing new moon phase, so we won't have the extra light to wash out the meteors. Viewing tips: just look straight up and the later you watch, the better it will be. You just might see a meteor a minute if you're lucky.

The shifting pattern will include the upper high pressure moving west and setting up over Colorado and New Mexico. As it slides west, cooler weather will ooze south from the northern Plains. Highs will mainly be in the 80s for the bulk of the week and there's even a chance we could see a drop in humidity for Tuesday/Wednesday.

The best rain chances will be over western Kansas into Colorado, closely tied to the monsoon moisture that will be trapped underneath of the high pressure. So while most of us will have a dry week, we still expect to see some rain in our state. 

Rainfall reports - some flooding concerns

Flooding in Wichita.... again

Here are some rainfall reports through 8 a.m. Wednesday morning

Smith Center: 3.26"
Salina: 2.19"
Newton: 1.40"
Minneapolis: 1.35"
Jabara Airport: 1.32"
Wichita: 1.15"
Russell: 1.01"
Concordia: 0.67"
Dodge City: 0.18"
Great Bend: 0.05"


Here is the doppler radar estimated totals through about 8 a.m. The legend is in the bottom right of the image and the numbers are in inches.

Signs of fall nearby and rain chances return to Kansas.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend and welcome to the month of August. Although the days continue to get shorter and the average high temperatures are now going down, this can still be a very hot month. So far this summer, anytime we start to hit a stride of excessive heat day after day, it's broken up with some rain and cooler weather. And that sort of pattern should continue for this month. 

There's going to be a large swath of cooler air just north and east of us for much of the week. From the Dakotas down through the entire upper Midwest, temperatures could easily be 15-25 cooler than normal. We will be just on the edge of that cooler airmass. The storm track will be just grazing the edge of Kansas, which makes it a little challenging to figure out when we will have rain. But so far, it looks like Tuesday and Thursday night will be our best chances.

You can see the moisture gathering over the Rockies and that storm system will head east into Tuesday. Unfortunately, not everyone will get rain. It's not a very strong system, but as it ventures over the Plains, some pockets of heavy downpours may setup Tuesday morning and afternoon. It will weaken even more and slide east by Wednesday.