Good morning bloggers,
The deadline to enter the summer contest is 4 PM today. Go to the last blog entry to see the rules.
It has only been 90 degrees 3 times all year at KCI, and only 5 days downtown. And, the hottest temperature has only been 93 at KCI, and 94 downtown. There have been hotter temperatures over the west and east, but not in the middle of the nation. Why? Because of the LRC!
As we predicted in our summer forecast back in May, I described the "long term" longwave trough that formed in October and early November. It is still there in a weakened state and centered from just west of the Mississippi River over eastern Missouri extending north through Lake Superior and into Canada, and we believe this is the biggest reason for the lack of a heatwave so far, in the middle of North America. The upper level flow continues to weaken, and it usually reaches its weakest amount of energy by the end of July or early in August. Then, it will slowly begin strengthening in late August and September as fall approaches. This is likely when the LRC falls apart and a new weather pattern begins to evolve, but it isn't until October when next years weather pattern really starts to show itself, or set-up.
So, here we are having a cooler than average summer, thus far. But, will it continue? It is starting to heat up and we may still fall just short of 90 degrees today at KCI. But, it should go above 90 Wednesday and Thursday. There is a storm forecast to track into the northern plains by Friday night and Saturday. This will drag our next cold front into the plains and should creat some MCS (Mesoscale Convective System) activity, and bring us our next chance of thunderstorms, and slightly cooler air. How far south will this front get? Every front has made to Kansas City this year, but with the flow aloft continuing to weaken, I am wondering how far south this weekend front will get. If it gets here and stalls we could get a lot of rain?
We will be tracking these developments on NBC Action News today and tonight. Our new set will begin construction next week. They will finish the flooring this week. It hasn't been easy for us as all of the computers have had to be moved 3 times already. We will have to move them two more times before the new set goes in. So, we are lucky that there hasn't been any major problems. Our engineers are doing a great job staying on top of this. The Olympics begin on NBC August 8th. Our new set and Forecast Center will be in and ready for you to share with us before that date!
Have a fantastic day! We will try to have an analysis of all of the entries in our summer contest either later today or tomorrow. The deadline, once again, is 4 PM today, and our weather team will let you know what our entries are later today.
Gary