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The coldest air of the season has decended upon eastern Kansas and western Missouri. In fact this arctic blast is the strongest push of cold air to settle over the region in years! I did some digging to find out just how cold this airmass is in relation to others in recent years.
Here are some numbers to put this in perspective.
- Last single digit high temperature in Kansas City: January 23, 2003 +9
- Last time a single digit high temperature occured during Decmber: December 30, 1990 +3
- Last time the temperature was -8 or colder: January 23, 2003 -9
The arctic high will still be west of the area today, and that means our flow will continue to be northwest funneling in the arctic air. So even with temperatures starting near 0 or a hair above, I think upper single digits to lower teens are likely today. KCI stands a chance of reaching 8 or 9 degrees, and downtown probably the teens.
The big story today will be the winds and wind chills. A wind chill advisory is in effect for much of today. With winds of 15-30 mph we can expect wind chills of -10 to -20 degrees.
Tonight the arctic high will drift right overhead and this means sub-zero temperatures. Lows will likely be in the neighborhood of -5 to -13 across the viewing area. The coldest readings will be over the regions with a snowpack, mainly north of I-70.
Now a quick look ahead to the Tuesday/Wednesday timeframe. As the arctic high moves east the surface flow will shift back to the south. This will introduce milder air to the region, but often times milder air flowing up and over colder more dense air can lead to warm air advection precipitation. In this case it looks like anything from snow to freezing drizzle to a mix is possible on Tuesday.
The bigger story may be a piece of enegy heading our way by early Wednesday(Christmas Eve). The GFS has been fairly consistent the past several runs with providing a nice storm for the viewing area that would give many a white Christmas. Of course this scenario would also mean some travel headaches. But isn't there always 2 sides to a good story? And you guessed it, the 12Z NAM comes out this morning with very little snow for Wednesday. Here is a quick model comparison for total forecast precipitation for the 24 hour period from Tuesday at noon until Wednesday at noon.
First the 6Z GFS for snow lovers...
Now the 12Z NAM for those wanting good travel conditions and little snow.
Both of the above models do include some of the light precipitation for Tuesday afternoon/evening. Which model will win, my guess is it may end up somewhere in between once again. We'll keep watching the trend and up everyone on this very important forecast on the blog and on our air.
Finally, there was a very interesting article in today's edition of the Kansas City Star about the Greensburg, KS tornado. The article is about how there may have been 22 tornadoes spawned by that storm. The study also discusses how the meso-cyclone may have been spinning just as fast as the tornado. Certainly something worth checking out so here is the link.
http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/946604.html
If you remember back to that night our Action Weather Team's very own storm chaser Sean Wilson videotaped the tornado as it grew into a monster. Sean's video clearing shows at least 3 different 'satellite' tornaodes. I'm very confident Sean's video was used to help in this study. Sean was one of very few people that were able to get video since the tornado occurred while it was dark outside.
If you have never watched Sean's video of this tornado please check it out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6U7OBA2fUI
Thanks for stopping by the #1 weather blog anywhere! As your friends and family gather this holiday season please tell them there is a forecast that can be trusted and it is only found on NBC Action News!
Stay warm today!
Jeremy