Good afternoon bloggers,
If you see snow this afternoon or evening, please post a comment in the blog and let us know where you live and what you are experiencing!
From 67 degrees Thursday to a chance of light snow Friday evening. We have experienced another big temperature drop and more are on the horizon. I do believe it is going to snow this evening across many parts of the viewing area, but it should be light with trace amounts to around a half inch. And, with the wind blowing if it does snow it will just blow it around a bit. We will be tracking this light snow potential on LIVE:ESP tonight on NBC Action News.
I will add some graphics in a few minutes on why I am calling this a strange weather pattern.....this morning I was wiped out and took a long nap. I am sorry about that. O.K. Here we go... I am awake and preparing for the 5, 6, and 10 PM newscasts on NBC Action News. We will have some special graphics to describe the following set up so be sure to watch tonight and let me know what you think of the way we decided to show this strange set up.
This first map below is the 500 mb forecast by the GFS model valid at 6 PM Sunday enening. Remember the 500 mb level is around 18,000 feet up and what I believe to be the best level to pick out some of the smaller scale as well as larger scale upper level storm systems. The X near Denver is a vorticity maximum, what we call a vort max, and this is heading right into western Kansas Sunday evening. There is a stream of vorticity coming out ahead of this X into northwestern Missouri. If this verifies it will snow along that stream and just north of it. So we should have some snow on Sunday into Monday from this set up. But, these are just fast moving weak upper level impulses.
This next map is also valid at 6 PM Sunday. This is the surface set up with the anchor Arctic high over southwestern Canada at this time. We are in the cold surface air, but a warm front is setting up across Oklahoma. This is just a strange set up and there is not much support to lift the warm front north, so with all of these disturbances coming across there could be some fast moving bands of precipiation in our region for days. The blue dashed line is the snow/no snow line. South of this line the precipitation would likely be in the form of freezing rain or sleet. Remember, we are expecting just very light precipitation with each of these disturbances, so we still do NOT see any major storm systems.
Have a great day. We do expect some snow tonight and we will be tracking all of these things and bring you Kansas City's most accurate forecast on NBC Action News. Jeremy Nelson will keep you updated over the weekend and I will be checking in as well. Have a great Friday Night in the big town. Stormy the weather dog will be on the air at 5 PM tonight. Elizabeth will help her do one of her tricks.
Gary