Good afternoon bloggers,
Here is the picture from Morse Elementary. This 4th grader, Fritz was quite excited. Fritz' mother wrote the following:
Our amazing school secretary (Mrs. Roy who Fritz adores and reports to each morning for daily temperatures) arranged for Fritz to meet the local NBC affiliate lead meteorologist Gary Lezak and his dog Stormy. It was just the best, Gary went to the classroom and told the class he heard that there was a weatherman in the class, the kids pointed to Fritz. They talked about the weather and checked out Gary's book, which he signed and gave to Fritz. They had a discussion about the chance of thunderstorms in the morning, Fritz said 10% and Gary said 90%...guess we'll have storms. He agreed to say hello to the class on the news tonight, so we'll be watching.
I hope Fritz is wrong, we'll see. Fritz, it was great meeting you today!
Previous entries:
I am on my way to Morse Elementary school for a short visit, then I have a photo shoot outside for Project Eldercool, and then I will finish up the blog. I will add my thoughts by around 3:30 PM, and we will have our own rainfall forecast on the 5, 6, and 10 PM newscasts tonight. Here are some maps, with two rainfall forecasts from different models....More in a little while.....but what do you think....
Update to finish this blog entry at 3:10 PM:
A few high based showers and thunderstorms have been widely scattered today. As moisture increases from the Gulf of Mexico we are setting up for an end to our 11 day dry spell. It will be tested later tonight, Thursday, and Friday with several chances for thunderstorms. The first one arrives later tonight. We are working on some special graphics for our weathercasts tonight, so watch NBC Action News for your most accurate forecast.
Look below at the surface forecast valid Thursday morning:
There is a warm front that will be very slowly moving northward into southern Kansas. High dewpoints, which have been hard to come by so far this year, will be surging into southern Kansas and will fuel the thunderstorms that will be developing north of the warm front. We seem to be in a favored location for a complex of thunderstorms between 3 and 10 AM on Thursday. Some locations could end up with over 2 inches of rain, but where will the bullseye be located? I plan on pinning this down during our weathercasts tonight. Below, you can see the NAM and GFS forecasts for rainfall during the 12 hour period of 1 AM to 1 PM Thursday:
We have been forecasting a high only in the 60s on Thursday, well below everyone elses forecast, for days now. But, I am not proud of this forecast yet. It hasn't happened, but it still seems to be pointing in this direction. If it rains, like I think it will, on Thursday, the warm front will become even stronger and the contrast of temperatures will become more dramatic with the rain cooled air north of the front, and hot and humid air south of the warm front. It may only be in the 50s near by on Thursday. So, this is one of the forecast problems that we are dealing with.
That is a strong surface low just south of Denver. Severe thunderstorms may break out way out there on Thursday. For us, the severe weather risk will remain quite low.
Have a great evening. We are planning excellent weathercasts to describe this tonight. And, we will have our lake forecast as well at 6 and 10 PM tonight.
Gary