Good Monday bloggers,
We are in an active weather pattern as we have been talking about. There are two more storm systems to track this week and they will create some wild weather in the Plains. Spring begins Thursday at 10:50 PM, but winter does not care. This is setting up a battle of the seasons.
Let's go through this day by day.
TODAY: Cloudy with areas of drizzle and mist. The heavier showers from the morning ended by 10 AM High: 40-45. Wind: E 5-10 mph.
TONIGHT: The drizzle will end this evening and the rest of the night will be cloudy with lows 35-40. Wind: N 5-10 mph
ST. PATRICK'S DAY: This looks like the calmest weather day of the week. It will be mostly cloudy with highs 50-55. Wind: N to E 5-10 mph. The first system will be approaching from the southwest.
WEDNESDAY: The first storm system arrives with a good chance of mainly morning rain and thunderstorms. Rain will be rather heavy at times. We could see .50-1.50" of rain with this system. Lows will be 45-55 and then a warm front surges north after the rain and highs will jump well into the 60s. Winds will shift from the east to south at 15-25 mph. If we see some sun, then low 70s are likely as long as the warm front surges north.
THURSDAY: The second storm system arrives with another good chance of mainly morning rain and thunderstorms, heavy at times. It will become very windy during the afternoon as the sun comes out. Lows will be around 60 and highs will jump to 70-75. A blizzard will occur from South Dakota to western Nebraska to Colorado and Wyoming where 5-15" of snow is likely. We have a potential severe weather set up here, but it looks like that will occur well east and north. Winds will become southwest at 20-30 gust 40-50 mph. The wind will gust to 50-60 mph west of here in the dry slot of the storm.
This is a menacing severe weather surface set up as you have the "triple point" where the cold front, warm front and dry line meet at a surface low located in northwest Kansas. The dry line is bulged out into eastern Kansas. You can get severe weather along the dry line. But, it looks like surface wind convergence will not be strong enough along the dry line so our severe threat is quite low. There could be some strong winds with the morning thunderstorms and we will have southwest winds gusting to 50 mph Thursday afternoon and night with no thunderstorms.
Here is the snowfall forecast for the storm. It is down a bit, but 5"-10" of snow is likely with a few locations seeing 10"-15".
FRIDAY: The big storm races away to New England allowing the colder air to surge south on strong north winds. Lows will be 27-32 with highs 35-40 even if some sun comes out. Arctic air will stay north. Look at the lows in Nebraska, ouch! We could have a hard freeze Friday morning as the models are not good at predicting the southward extent of cold air in our region.
SATURDAY: If we do not see a hard freeze Friday we will have a second chance Saturday. Highs will rise to the 40s under a partly cloudy sky with less wind.
SUNDAY: There will be increasing clouds ahead of our next storm that arrives Monday with highs around 50. There is even a fourth storm to track at the end of next week. The storm systems next week have a slight chance to bring us snow. Rain is likely with both systems, so total rainfall the next 7-10 days will be 1.50" to 3".
Have a great week.
