KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Good morning bloggers,
We just went from 86 degrees on Tuesday with nearly 60-mile-per-hour wind gusts without any thunderstorms to snowflakes on Wednesday. Yesterday's high temperature was 72 degrees at midnight and we had a trace of snow a few hours later. This is the storm that Weather 20/20 predicted four months ago. I blogged about it and posted it and then it happened. We said the target was the region around Mayfield, Kentucky. And, fortunately, there wasn't a return of the horrific tornado that killed 56 people. At the same time, they had a scary hour at 4:30 p.m. yesterday and there are reports of some damage. This is in the category of "you can't make this up." They had a tornado warning and possible damage yesterday afternoon. Mayfield had to take cover yesterday and thank goodness they were spared.
The severe thunderstorms skipped over Tornado Alley again. Now, there were tornadoes in Iowa on the northern edge of Tornado Alley, but look at the tornado watches so far this year:
Kansas has yet to have a tornado watch. Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas have now gone 1,051 days without a Tornado Watch. May 28, 2019, will be three full years without one. Now, I am forecasting one to three tornado watches by the end of May. For now, however, it seems to be happening again!
The biggest reason why the severe weather seems to be missing our area and blasting areas over the southeast is the LRC. The weather pattern that is cycling in the past three years has set up to miss Kansas City. The second biggest reason is likely La Niña. The past two years have had moderately strong La Niñas, the cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean. This has influenced the LRC and helped push storm systems into the southeastern U.S.
Easter Sunday forecast
The jet stream will be shifting north just a bit. Storm systems are spinning north of the jet stream and there is another blizzard in the forecast for North Dakota on Easter Sunday:
As Sunday's storm produces the snowstorm up north, Kansas City will have a front approaching with a few showers possible. It is not a big storm for us, but there may be an hour or two of rain showers on Easter Sunday. We will time them out for you on KSHB 41 today and tonight.
So, the weather is calming down. Today will have a high in the upper 50s to near 60 degrees. It will feel great this afternoon and the flowers and trees that are blooming should be quite pretty. Let's stop and smell the roses and enjoy each day!
Thank you for sharing this weather experience and spending a few minutes of your day reading the weather blog. Have a great Thursday.
Gary
