Joe’s Weather Blog: Chance of Rain for Holiday Weekend (VEN-7/1) | FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV

We ended June 2.2° above average and at KCI at least…about 1/2″ below average. However, many areas are considerably drier and could really use some rain. The clay soils have a few cracks, which is not really unusual…

All in all, the weekend will not be terrible. The main issue may be until 2pm tomorrow or so with thunderstorms and rain moving from the KS side to the MO side as tomorrow morning advances. Overall, Sunday looks okay and Monday should be too. Lots of steamy heat is coming though to end the holiday weekend.

There is also the question of today’s storm risk…

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Provide:

Today: variable and slightly heavier clouds. There may be scattered thunderstorms later today or tonight, but I don’t expect much coverage at this point. Some of the storms could be strong for affected areas. Highs in the mid upper 80s…maybe a little warmer on the south side of the region

Tonight: Variable clouds with thunderstorms becoming more likely near daybreak. Minimum near 70°

Tomorrow: Rain/thunderstorms at times until early afternoon, then mostly cloudy. Not as warm with treble only in the upper 70s

Sunday: Warmer and more humid with highs close to 90°. Heat indices close to 100°. There is a small chance of rain for a few hours in the morning

Monday: Hot and humid with highs in the 90s… high humidity too

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Discussion:

A weak front bisects the region this morning…there isn’t much wind associated with it…and there isn’t much “convergence” with it either. In other words, the two air masses that the front separates do not collide too strongly.

The front this morning is more or less stationary at this point…needs something.

South of the front… dew points approach 70°. I think it was yesterday when I showed you that the highest dew points were well south of the area…they have been crawling north over the past 24 hours. The solid green color is the 70° dew point line.

With the front in the area this afternoon…with some building instability and with the humidity increasing…there is a recipe for storms BUT…there is not much convergence…we are some bit capped…and things are just a little off appears for widespread thunderstorms.

Worth mentioning at least a few scattered storms in the area…especially from the metro south later this afternoon or early tonight.

As we’ve been talking about all week…and in the grand scheme of things (at least so far) the forecast has been nailed down with potential rain for the holiday weekend…the chance of rain/storm the higher is during the 1st part of Saturday in Saturday mid-afternoon. The hope is that the rain and storms will move away at some point around 2-4pm tomorrow, giving us remnants of rain-chilled air and below-average temperatures for the start of the holiday weekend. .

Rainfall amounts will vary from 1/2″ to 1 1/2″ approximately. Since some thunderstorms are in the mix… some areas might see more if they get repeat clusters of thunderstorms.

I’m not too excited about the chance of rain on Sunday…but there may be some thunderstorms/showers in the morning…but I don’t think there’s too much coverage with that.

Next, the focus is on heat and humidity. It will be nasty in both departments until the middle of next week. The rain we’ll see over the next few days may have to give us some pain for a while…because I’m not too excited about a lot of rain next week…there may be rain on Thursday but this is by no means set in stone at this point.

The EURO has this idea…

Morning lows will be in the 70s near 80°

Dew points will probably be in the 70s for most of this…that means the heat from the steam is the other thing. So expect heat indices to be in the 100-108+° range.

This is an overall warm regime that may or may not bring disturbances from the western plains. IF the future “heat wave generator” settles in the “wrong” place… and it diverts the disturbances towards the northeast of the region… it may not rain much after tomorrow.

IF this “generator” is further west of the zone…and we are on the east side of the heat…then we may be vulnerable to a chance of rain.

We’ll dive into the outlook on the next blog.

Have a great holiday weekend…

Background photo is by Patrick Redding

Jo