Good morning bloggers & Weather Enthusiasts,
Look at what has happened in the past week in Kansas City:
- We had freezing rain, with icicles hanging from the trees just one week ago on April 3rd
- Just a few days later it was 80° on April 7th, and then KC broke the record high by three degrees on April 8th when it reached 88°
- There is a good chance of some snowflakes falling before the Easter weekend is over
We introduced the LRC in the Action Weather Blog in the early 2000s. The LRC was actually named by the bloggers, as I just called it my theory back then and a few of you thought it needed a name. Over the past two decades we have made some big long range forecasts such as predicting the outdoor Super Bowl weather forecast in East Rutherford New Jersey in 2014 accurately. While other forecasts called for brutal cold and snow for that game, Weather2020 predicted "No chance of snow with temperatures in the 50s". It was 54° and dry that day! Years later, 55 days before there was even a cloud, Hurricane Harvey was predicted to happen within five days of the eclipse. Weather2020 went a step further and even predicted it to be a major hurricane threatening the Texas coast, and this was done in the boardroom of a major insurance company. Then Tropical Storm Gordon was predicted to happen 8 months ahead of time, and I did this prediction in front of my peers at the American Meteorological Society conference in Austin Texas a couple of years ago. Gordon formed and tracked almost exactly over the predicted track 8 months earlier over the northeast Gulf of Mexico. There have been hundreds of these forecasts over the past two decades with increasing accuracy.
From the peer reviewed paper, "Cycling Patterns Of The Northern Hemisphere": "The science of weather forecasting has evolved tremendously over the past few decades. With all of the advances in the field of meteorology, it is widely believed that there is a 15-day limit in forecast skill. During the past 30 years, a long-range forecasting system has been developed and having an understanding of the cycle length is essential when making weather forecasts based on this new hypothesis."
This is what brings us to this current storm. From the WeatherBrains Podcast with James Spann on February 25th, I said: "There is a 90% chance of an outbreak from east Texas to your area in Alabama around April 10th". And, we can go back farther to the weather blog on December 16th:
Above is what I wrote in this blog entry from the Tradeweather.com blog. 115 days before today, we made this four month forecast for a storm similar to that one to return this weekend. And, look at the latest risk from the Storm Prediction Center.
You can't make this up! Just look at the risk out from the Storm Prediction Center for the potential outbreak over the exact area we predicted it would be this weekend 115 days ago. It looks almost the same as the outlook from December, and how about October. In October, while the Dallas Cowboys hosted the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday Night Football on NBC, a 37-10 victory by the cowboys, there was an outbreak of severe weather that evening with tornado warnings in the Dallas metro area. Again, look at the two severe weather forecasts. It is not a coincidence, and this was predicted to arrive this weekend. This is another great example of the LRC providing the technology to go way beyond that 15-day limit that most meteorologists believe is the limit on weather forecasting.
There is order to the chaos in the river of air above us, and the LRC describes this order. If you go back and watch our spring forecast from last month, this weekends storm is the signature storm I used to describe the LRC and pick out this weekend for the storm. Here is a link showing how we went deeper into meteorology to showcase how this part of the pattern would return this weekend: Spring Forecast Showing This Part Of The Pattern
So, what does this mean for Easter weekend. Let's take a look at the forecast.
Kansas City Weather Timeline:
- Today: Mostly sunny with light winds. A great day. High: 57°
- Tonight: Mostly clear with increasing clouds later tonight. Low: 47°
- Saturday: Periods of clouds with a 40% chance of showers. There is a chance of a thunderstorm. Most of the day will be dry with strong south winds at 15-30 mph. High: 68°
- Saturday night: Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Low: 58°
- Easter Sunday Cloudy with a 100% chance of rain. A few heavy thunderstorms are possible. A cold blast will arrive later in the day. High: 60°, with falling temperatures to 32° by evening. There is a 60% chance or rain changing to snow or sleet, or mixing with snow or sleet during the evening. Winds will increase to 30-40 mph with higher gusts and wind chills will drop to the teens.
The pattern continues to cycle, it is always cycling and regularly. What is next? The coldest temperature of the winter happened in this part of the LRC in February. So, expect a very cold Monday and Tuesday morning. And, then we are expecting another chance of a freeze, and possibly some snow in the next ten days. It's a wild April.
Thank you for spending a few minutes of your day reading the weather blog. Have a great Frirday.
Gary
