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Good morning,
Finally, weather worth writing home about! Temperatures this weekend are expected to hit the 80s Saturday and stay in the upper 70s Sunday. Saturday, I'll be out at Shawnee Mission Beach Volleyball building sandcastles! It is part of the first annual KC Sand Sculpting Festival. There are sand sculpting skills needed, if you like playing in the sand then you qualify. But you may find a creation that looks like this.
Please don't be intimidated, this is obviously a professional's work. Katie Corning, a pro sand sculpter will be out there doing demonstrations and handing out tips. There are amateur divisions and kid divisions. You can get more information by visiting www.smbv.com . It'll be a beach party with a ton of sand and fun and highs in the 80s. Shawnee Mission Beach Volleyball is located at 19800 Johnson Drive. See you Saturday!
Brett
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Good morning,
I saw some of the bloggers mention CoCoRaHs the other day. CoCoRaHs stands for Community, Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network. It is a non-profit, network of volunteers who measure & map precipitation. If you are interested go to www.cocorahs.org for more information.
I was checking out the 500mb flow earlier this morning. (500 millibars, roughly 18-thousand feet above the surface) and next week looks cool & wet. Looking at the 500 mb flow will tell us where potential storms will form. Look at next week's 500mb map.
There is an obvious storm over the inner-mountain west, apparently centered over the 4-corners region of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The storm draws lots of Pacific moisture northward into the KC metro area, so next Wednesday & Thursday, more rain. It appears we will be very cool, maybe too cool for any real severe weather. As for this weekend, more rain tomorrow night and a cloudy, cool Mother's Day! Happy Mother's Day to all the moms.
Have a great weekend,
Brett
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Good morning,
The numbers coming out of Myanmar are stunning. Cyclone Nargis has killed more than 22-thousand people. Another 41-thousand are missing and up to a million may be homeless. Cyclone Nargis created huge Tidal Waves blamed for many of the deaths. Look below at the NASA satellite pictures. The first one taken on April 15th shows the shoreline along the Gulf of Martaban, notice the river deltas in the lower left of the picture. Then look at the picture below from May 5th.
Notice the same river deltas covered in water, the shoreline submerged, all the way north to the cities of Yangon and Pegu. With any hurricane or cyclone the greatest threat is the storm surge and of course the wind. Nargis made landfall with wind gusts clocked at 160 mph. Flood water can be difficult to see in photo-like satellite images, particularly when the water is muddy. This pair of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite use a combination of visible and infrared light to make floodwaters obvious. Water is blue or nearly black, vegetation is bright green, bare ground is tan, and clouds are white or light blue.
Amazing images to say the least.
Brett
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Good morning bloggers,
We keep working to improve our forecasts here on NBC Action News and I now have access to updated information produced by our in-house computer model twice between midnight and 7:00AM. It is higher resolution data, meaning it focuses on a very small area, in our case metro KC. This morning, the new model roled out this scenario for rainfall tomorrow.
Notice the time, because this could be the most important part of the forecast tomorrow. It is possible that it won't rain until late Thursday afternoon. The in-house data spits out a half to 3/4" of rain but again most of that could fall Thursday night. So don't frustrated by the forecast if you are waiting and waiting for rain tomorrow.
Now onto some fun. I usually try to be sleeping by 8pm, but last night I stayed up late to talk weather with Cub Scout Pack 3253 in Shawnee, Kansas. Take a look at this fun group!
I will be monitoring how well the new in-house computer data verifies. It did really well with the severe weather event last Thursday. If you watched the midday news, I showed a couple waves of thunderstorms moving through last Thursday afternoon and night. Tomorrow, will be test number two. Let's see how it works.
Brett
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Good morning,
There were 91 reports on Thursday of severe weather across the entire NBC Action Weather Plus viewing area, including a possible tornado in St. Joe. The Weather Service will do a damage assesment survey today and determine if it was a tornado or a microburst. Most of the severe weather reports were related to hail or high winds. Check out this picture from Kelli Bernd who took this shot of a menacing thunderstorm rolling into Olathe around 7:00pm.
Prior to that additional thunderstorms produced numerous hail shafts. Ross Kimbrough sent this one to us from the 56th & Metcalf area.
On top of the severe weather, there were several reports of heavy rain. Nearly two inches of rain in some spots, south and east of Kansas City. In Southwest Missouri, streets are still closed in one town in Barry County. Here is a picture of Monett, Missouri.
As Gary said in his blog, the weather should dry out for a period here next week. Hard hit areas with rising waters should see those waters recede through late next week.
Have a great weekend,
Brett
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Hi bloggers,
Last Saturday, Olathe held its annual marathon. A guy from Minnesota won the race, ran it in less than 3 hours. I ran the half-marathon, 13.1 miles. My friend, Ric and I finished finished 400th out of 600 some odd runners. The winner ran the race in about an hour-15.
As you can see in the pic, it was cloudy and cold. Pefect for a marathon or a half-marathon. I found this article on-line, on research done into the best weather for running a marathon. It comes from www.poweringmuscles.com.
"Researchers gathered many years' worth of results and weather data from six major North American marathons and performed stastical analyses to determine the effect of air temperature on finishing times among runners at various levels of performance. Specifically, they looked at year-to-year comparative finishing times of the top three male and female runners at each event, as well as the 25th, 50th, 100th, and 300th finishers.
The results showed a clear trend toward faster times at colder temperatures. For example, the finishing times of male races winners were, on average, 1.7% slower than the course record when the air temperature was between 34 and 50 degrees. The finishing times of the top male runners were 2.5% slower than the course record, however, when the temperature was between 51 and 59 degrees. And at higher temperatures, finishing times fell off even more dramatically.
Runners at all levels were slowed by warmer air, but higher temperatures had a smaller effect on faster runners. The ideal marathon temperature, according to these analyses, was a bone-chilling 41 degrees. Think about that when you sign up for your next marathon!
My next marathon will likely be one in Maryville, MO in June. I'm thinking it will be a lot warmer than 41 degrees. Also, wanted to pass along this sunrise snapshot from Mike Penley in Gilman City, Missouri. Gilman City is up on the Harrison/Daviees county line.
Great picture, Mike thanks!
Have a great day,
Brett
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Hello bloggers,
I need a favor. Over the weekend, I duked it out for comedy supremecy with some other weather wonks from competing T-V stations. We all played a character named Sparky Blanson, teenage weatherperson in a comedy sketch performed during a broadcast of "Right Between the Ears" from Crown Center.
If you go to www.rightbetweentheears.com you can listen to everyone's performance then vote for who is best. It was a fun night and really cool to do something live like that.
Vote for me Sparky Blanson and I'll work on making all your days sunnier.
Thanks,
Brett
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Good day bloggers,
Wow, this is one ugly day! And if you are driving along I-435 near Metcalf Avenue in Johnson County, Kansas you could tell that just looking at a sign. It is supposed to be the World's Largest barometer. It keeps track of the changing weather by changing colors.
The sign harnesses the unique technology of LED, and doubles as a barometer. It gradually changes color as the weather changes occur. So as people drive by the building each day, they can have an understanding of weather patterns based on the color of the Sunlight Saunas sign. Here's how they say it works, " When the air pressure hits a certain benchmark, the sign will begin to change and take about 1 minute to fully change into the next color. You should not see blended colors unless you happen to catch it for that one minute while the color change is taking place."
The sign breaks down into 3 different colors – yellow, green and blue.
- Yellow indicates a high pressure system or nice clear weather – not stormy
- Green indicates a medium pressure system which means weather is changing and storms may be on the horizon
- Blue indicates a low pressure system which usually translates to stormy conditions
They say 200-thousand people pass the sign every day. I'm keeping an eye on it to see how accurate it is. Today, I'm guessing it is blue with the pressure dropping slightly over the last three hours.
If you read the previous post, I talked about Louisville Meteorologist John Belski
using a weather pattern theory of his own for long range forecasts. John E-mailed me back and here is what he had to say, "the 6 week cycle is basically something that sets up here...like you said...in November and actually goes through about May. It usually ranges to 5 weeks on the short end up to 8 weeks on the long end but it is there every year. I enjoy reading the KSHB weather blogs. I appreciate all the effort everyone puts into it. I have done a 14 day forecast for about 7 years now....still haven't been able to convince everyone its worth." John, We know you're pain.
Thanks for checking in with my blog, have a great day!
Brett
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Good morning bloggers, Say what you will about the LRC, but I think I've found evidence that others believe in or use long-term, longwave patterns for long range forecasting. When I was in Lousiville Kentucky last week visiting family, WAVE-3 meteorologist John Belski
posted a 14 day forecast for the region they refer to as Kentuckianna (southern Indiana & Kentucky)
That got my attention, and started wondering on what is he basing this trend. Then low and behold, John lets it fly. "I think we'll still some cooler days ahead, as I believe the pattern is on a six week cycle." Wow! I've e-mailed John to see what if any long-term longwave pattern he is using. Hopefully he'll get back to me and I can share his thoughts with you. As for my thoughts on the LRC, which Scott has asked me about, I don't think you can deny the correlation between the occurence of long wave troughs over an "on-average" number of days. But here's what I've noticed. The surface reflection of these upper air patterns changes dramatically from Winter to Spring to Summer. For instance, and I'm keeping this simple on purpose,
Last year on March 22nd we had a strong low pressure area here and in Carroll Co. Missouri, there was a tornado warning. Last year's LRC was 42-45 days and we talked about a possible tornado outbreak here on May 5th, well the outbreak was in western Oklahoma and of course, Greensburg, KS. The long wave position was correct but this time the surface low was farther west and a little slower. We did, however, get heavy rain event out of that long-wave setup, just no severe weather. My point is, the LRC works for long-range forecasting; i.e. cold-ar outbreaks, heatwaves, wetter and drier periods or stormier periods, but just because it produced extreme weather one time doesn't mean it will happen in the same location with the same magnitude again. Well, there you have it.
Thanks for reading, have a great day,
Brett
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Good morning,
All this week on NBC Action News Today from 5 to 7am we are offering Spring planting tips. Here is the link to those tips, http://www.backyardgardener.com. But if you are planning on taking advantage of the nice Spring weather this week, you may want to wait.
This morning's GFS model has a wicked shot of cold air coming in around April 1st, no fooling. 
That adds up to a morning low on April first around 25 or 26 degrees. That's considered a hard freeze. So far, the fruit trees haven't budded out but a few Spring flowers have, so if you have some flowers you want to see stick around you may want to cover them this Saturday and then on the 1st. Oh and if this storm strengthens, it may still snow some where in the region Sunday or Monday, lets see how it trends as the week goes unfolds. Tomorrow, another meteorologist in another part of the country who is talking about a weather pattern that is cycling,
Have a great day,
Brett
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Good morning,
You know it, you lived through it! Winter was cold! How cold? Scientists at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration found this past winter was the coldest since 2001.
It also ranks 54 coldest since record keeping began in 1895. Still, the average U-S Temperature was 33.2 degrees, 0.2 degrees warmer than the 20th century average. The above average temperatures in the south and southeast meant winter temperature-related energy demand was about 2 percent lower than average.
What I find encouraging is the fact mountain snow pack was 150-percent above average in large parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Oregon at the end of February. Spring runoff from the snowpack will help drought stricken areas. Check out the winter precip map.
As we know here in the NBC Action Weather Plus viewing area it was a wet winter. That trend looks like it is continuing into next week. As for this week, as you know, it is Severe Weather Awareness Week. Today the focus is on "Weather Radios".
The NBC Action WeatherPlus Team is working with metro Price Choppers to keep your family safe. Some Price Choppers have weather radios like the one above on sale for around 30 dollars. The department of Homeland Security recommends Weather Radios for emergency preparedness.
Have a great weekend,
Brett
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Good morning, Today's focus of severe weather awareness is Thunderstorms. Of course, you can't have a tornado unless you have a parent thunderstorm. Tornadoes are one dangerous aspect of thunderstorms. Another one being lightning which, on average, kills more people than tornadoes. The info below comes courtesy of the National Weather Service. They have given us permission to reproduce the information as a means to increase awareness.
"Lightning is one of nature's most awe inspiring and dangerous phenomenon. The average lightning flash could light a 100-watt light bulb for more than three months! The temperature of a lightning bolt may reach 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit which is hotter than the surface of the sun!
On average, lightning kills one person in Kansas and Missouri each year, and about 73 nationwide. Lightning remains one of the most deadly weather phenomena in the United States, and it can occur almost anywhere throughout the entire year.
Many people are injured or killed due to misinformation and inappropriate behavior during thunderstorms. A few simple precautions can reduce many of the dangers posed by lightning. Remember, Lightning Kills, Play it Safe!
AVOID being in or near:
High places and open fields, isolated trees, unprotected gazebos, rain or picnic shelters, baseball
dugouts, communication towers, flagpoles, light poles, bleachers (metal or wood), metal fences, convertibles, golf carts, water (ocean, lakes, swimming pools, rivers, etc.).
When inside a building AVOID:
Use of the telephone or computer, taking a shower, washing your hands, doing dishes, or any contact with conductive surfaces with exposure to the outside such as metal door or window frames, electrical wiring, telephone wiring, cable TV wiring, plumbing, etc.
If driving:
Stay in your car! An enclosed automobile offers reasonably good protection from lightning, as long as you don't touch metal."
Have a great day, tomorrow wraps up Severe Weather Awareness Week. Tomorrow the focus is on Weather Radios.
On to the Snake Parade Forecast. The Snake Parade is Saturday, March 15th at 11:00am. Below is the 6z GFS which shows a rain/snow mix possibly lasting into the the afternoon. Temperatures will be in the upper 30s with blustery north winds.
The parade starts at 14th & Swift in the northland. The parade will go on no matter the weather. Of course, organizers are hoping for a nice day, but it is March 15th and you know what they say, "Beware the Ides of March"
Have a great Thursday,
Brett
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Good morning,
Thanks for visiting this blog which is designed to be a supplement to the "NBC Action Weather Blog" I invite you to ask questions on this blog and then check back regularly for an answer. As for today, I'll focus on Flash Flooding as part of Severe Weather Awareness Week. I'm not sure where the phrase, "Turn Around, Don't Drown", came from but it has really caught on as a warning for driving through high water.
"Most flood deaths occur at night, and in automobiles. Barricades across flooded roads are there for your protection. Drivers can lose control of their vehicles in as little as six inches of water. Two feet of water is generally enough to carry most vehicles away, including SUV’s. Remember, the road bed under the water may have been scoured or even washed away during flooding, creating unsafe driving conditions."
National Flood Safety Awareness Week runs next week. For more information on flooding here's a link. http://weather.gov/floodsafety. . Tomorrow, details on safety during Thunderstorms.
Have a great Wednesday, enjoy the warm up.
Brett
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Good morning,
Severe Weather Awareness Week continues. Today we concentrate on Tornado Safety. But first a question. What are the chances of being struck by a tornado? Some research shows that even in you live your whole life in Tornado Alley, you would have to wait 14-hundred years to be struck by a tornado. So the "point probability" of a direct strike appears very small. But remember, during the peak of tornado season, at least 5 tornadoes touch down every day somewhere in the U-S.
On to today's tips. (First Indoors)
1. Stay Away from and Do Not Open Windows
2. Go to Lowest Level, Center Part of the Smallest Room
3. Flying Debris is the Most Dangerous Thing
(Outdoor)
1. Get out of Car & Mobile Homes
2. Do not try and outrun a tornado
3. Lie Flat in a Ditch
4. Cover you head with your hands
Why get out of your car? Tornadoes have thrown vehicles a quarter mile, that's a long way. You have a better chance surviving by finding a ditch and lying flat. Tomorrow, we'll go over Flash Floods, which most years kill more people than tornadoes.
Have a great day,
Brett
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Good morning,
This is severe weather awareness week in the NBC Action Weather Plus viewing area. Monday is Severe Weather Preparedness Day. It is a day to think about your action plan or if you don't have one, get an action plan together.
If you are Severe Weather savvy then you have this drill down, but this week is just a good reminder that we are heading into the "Stormy" season, so it is what it is, Awareness. Here is a link to the Red Cross's website. It has lots of good info. http://www.redcross.org/disaster/disasterguide/
Tomorrow, we'll go over tornado stats and review some tornado preparedness. Now onto the biggest question I was asked over the weekend. What will Easter be like? Looking at the 6z GFS from this morning. These are the temperatures at 5,000 feet off the surface for 1pm Easter.
This time of year, if the atmosphere is dry, you would add about 20-25 degrees to these temps to get your high. 850 temps around -9 would mean temperatures in the upper 30s or lows 40s for EASTER. Ouch! Its still two weeks away, so lots can change but since that was most asked question over the weekend. I thought I'd give an early guess.
Have a great day,
Brett
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