Good Thursday bloggers,
It may be hard to believe that we have not had a heat wave this summer. Because this summer it has not bee the heat, but the humidity. It takes 3 straight days with highs of 95° or higher at KCI, the official reporting station for KC to make a heat wave.
The reason for the potential heat wave is that in the upper level flow we have a "heat wave creating machine" moving over head. This is also known as a "heat dome", "upper level high" and "anticyclone."
The heat dome will track from the Rockies today to overhead this weekend. The good news, is that it will retreat back to the west early next week. This will put our area in northwest flow, opening the door for cold fronts and small weather systems.
Next Tuesday if you look off of the east coast, you can see Erin. Erin may very well be a major hurricane by next Tuesday. There are strong signs that it will stay thankfully offshore. It will hopefully stay north of the Caribbean islands and north and west of Bermuda as well.
Now, how hot could it get? Let's go through this.
TODAY:
Highs will be around 90° with moderate humidity. The cold front we are tracking will be entering the northern Plains.
FRIDAY-MONDAY:
Highs will be around 95° with lows around 75°. Heat index values will be 105°-115°. The higher heat index values will be in rural areas where there is "corn/soybean sweat." This is the evapotranspiration of the plants. In other words these plants emit water that they take from the ground. And in most locations there is quite a bit of water in the ground. There will be a south breeze at 10-20 mph. This will help a tad.
So, you can see there is the potential for our first heat wave as temperatures will be around 95° for 4 consecutive days.
The cold front we are starting to track today will crawl this way as it moves some one day and stalls the next.
TUESDAY:
The front finally gets here. It will bring scattered areas of thunderstorms. You can see this in the temperatures. After all locations get into the 90s, areas that see thunderstorms will drop to the 70s. One of those locations on this data is KC. There is no guarantee the locations are correct this far out. But, there is a decent chance we will be in the zone where scattered areas of thunderstorms form.
How much rain could fall?
RAINFALL FORECAST MONDAY-WEDNESDAY:
The organized rain with widespread 2"-5" amounts will occur from the eastern Dakotas to Wisconsin to Ohio around the periphery of the dome, the "rim of fire. We have been in that zone from time to time this summer.
Our area will see locations that see a trace-.25" to some that see 1"-2". Again, the exact location of the heaviest rain is far from set.
Overall, we are doing pretty good with the rain. We are about 2" above average for the year after we saw almost 10" of rain in July. Some locations saw around one foot of rain. August has been drier with the official rainfall at 0.56". Some locations have seen less than this, while some locations have seen as much as 1"-3" of rain.
All yards will need a drink of water after this upcoming hot stretch as the topsoil dries out fast this time of year.
Have a great weekend
Stay healthy
