Watch NBC Action News beginning at 8am Saturday morning for the latest information on the big warm-up and the Sunday storm!
Happy Leap Day! The last day of February 2008 brought with it pretty nice conditions. Highs were generally in the upper 40s to low 50s today with 100% sunshine during the afternoon. Finally a 'typical' weather day.
The focus is now on the weekend and the much anticipated warm-up that will occur on Saturday. Strong south to southwest winds will kick in early Saturday and draw in much warmer air from the south-central Plains. These locations saw highs in the 60s and 70s on Friday. Highs close to home on Saturday will range from around 60 degrees over northeast areas, mid 60s in Kansas City, and low 70s over southwest locations. Here are the exact numbers the models(12Z) were spitting out for a high temperature at KCI on Saturday. This gives you a snapshot of how our own knowledge and judgement goes into finalizing a forecast each day with such a wide range of guidance to view.
NGM: 75
NAM: 65
GFS: 63
In-house model: 65
With the expected mixing that will occur tomorrow and strong warm air advection I'm leaning in the mid 60s for the metro...but wouldn't be totally shocked if a few bank thermometers showed 70.
Temperatures for Saturday are challenge number 1. Challenge number 2 is a much greater one that will be fine tuned as we head into the weekend. The timing of a cold front, available moisture, precipitation amounts, and possible changeover to snow. These questions are associated with our next storm which will arrive later Sunday and continue into Monday. The 18Z models continue to pull the heavier precipitation to the north. The 18Z GFS being the most aggressive with the northern shift. To show you how close this may be to no rain/snow or a lot of rain/some snow let's look at the accumulated precipitation maps from the NAM & GFS.
Here is the NAM 36 hour precipitation total for the Sunday/Monday time frame.
Now here is the GFS accumulated precipitation forecast from the 18Z run. Notice the heavier totals are much farther north. This would have the metro in over 1" of precip in all locations!
Sunday looks like a day in the 50s to around 60 before the front arrives. Areas like Sedalia, Clinton, Iola, and Harrisonville should be in the 60s that day...maybe even close to 70 in Clinton. But for our northern friends highs will likely be in the 40s in Maryville! The colder air will eventually win out and temperatures will fall into the 40s during the afternoon in KC. The question that will be answered hopefully sooner rather than later is if the northern trend of the precipitation will continue and will enough cold air work in to change this over the snow and produce accumulations in some areas. I'll add more thoughts soon!
Thanks for hanging in there with the slow loading speed on the blog the past few days. The web crew is working on an upgrade and this should be done soon...we hope:) Make sure to check back often as we will keep you updated on the weekend and bring you Kansas City's most accurate forecast!
Jeremy