Another interesting day in the world of weather this morning. Yesterday we hit 91° for the warmest (hottest) it’s been so far this year. A lot of heat and instability was around but yet, for the most part, we managed to miss out on any storms in the afternoon. That wasn’t that surprising to me…a lack of surface wind convergence was one of the culprits to this as the front that was coming towards the south, basically washed out before it got here.
Then overnight we had one thunderstorm complex develop in eastern MO…that threw out an outflow boundary, basically rain-cooled air, that was pushing westbound all evening and night. In return new storms developed along the edge of that outflow. Another complex of storms developed in the Plains and moves SEwards…the two collided to some degree in the region.
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Forecast:
Today: Mostly sunny and a bit more tolerable with highs 85-90°
Tonight: Fair skies with a risk of storms but the better chances may be farther towards the north or northeast of KC. Lows near 70°
Tomorrow: Getting hotter and more humid again. A few isolated storms are possible…highs near 90°
Saturday/Sunday: Mostly sunny hot and humid. A bit breezy on Sunday with highs both days around 90…85-90° Saturday and near 90 Sunday.
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Discussion:
Let’s start with last night. There were some strong winds that moved through parts of the area…upwards of 50-60 MPH winds…and numerous severe thunderstorm warnings. There were also a couple of tornado warnings for areas towards the SE of KC.
These were for something called QLCS tornado potential.
QLCS stands for Quasi Linear Convective System tornadoes…along the leading edge of the mass of rain associated with a squall line. The NWS has been issuing more warnings on these over the past few years and in some ways it’s a good thing and to be honest (since most of these happen at night) in some ways I’m not so sure.
The “spin-ups” are typically quick…lasting only a few minutes and sometimes never even touch down. The way you can “see” them sometimes is by looking for little “notches” on a radar display and then seeing if there is a “couplet” in the velocity data (winds coming towards and away from a radar site). IF the two match a QLSC tornado is possible at times.
The indicator may be in one scan and then be gone in the next scan. That makes the warnings tough to be ahead of the curve. With all this happening at night and the rareness of the QLCS tornado lasting more than a few minutes tops…a lot of folks wake up in the middle of the night not knowing what’s going on.
It’s a challenge from there because often these QLCS tornados produce very small areas of damage with winds of 60-80 MPH…or basically what the line of storms has the potential of doing regardless of whether or not a QLCS tornado is event here or not. So odds are the tree limb was coming down anyway from the straight line winds as opposed to the possible QLCS winds.
Obviously there are outliers to these generalities…but that’s typically the rule of thumb. In the past a severe thunderstorm warning would be issued and within the text a “tornado possible” would be inserted. Sometimes though a tornado warning is issued instead. Tornado warnings at night sort of stink because rarely can anything ever be seen in these situations.
The complexes of storms that merged was a fascinating thing…last night I tweeted this out.
My colleagues in Pleasant Hill sent this out a few minutes later…
and then this morning I sent this out…
My thought process is that the boundary from the convection to the east that was pushing west interacted was ingested by the storms coming through eastern KS into the Metro. Notice that thin blue line on the MO side pushing into Jackson Co MO and running right into the ESEwards moving thunderstorms from the KS side.
The weather service just sent this out this morning…regarding the brief tornado path from earlier.
There were other wind reports as well…seemingly in the 50-60 MPH range…
Onwards…
Today we should be settled…after a complex like that moves through…usually we have somewhat stabilized, sinking air around and that’s my thought for today.
There will be another cluster of overnight storms…we’ll see where they end up moving but it could be farther north of KC…and then another risk develops later tomorrow night into Saturday morning and again this might be more northeast/east of KC.
There will be another front in the region later tomorrow into tomorrow night though with a lot of heat rebuilding tomorrow…so it’s worth watching.
Then at some point next Monday into Tuesday we’ll be dealing with the remnants of Christobal that will be coming through the Gulf Of Mexico
The moisture from this will start advancing into the area on Monday…clouds are expected.
Then on Tuesday whatever circulation is left will be moving into MO it appears…perhaps SE of KC. The GFS brings this right up the State Line…giving us quite a bit of rain…while other data as the bigger rains towards SE MO.
There will be also be an advancing cold front coming into the area as well…so we’d be getting rain from that, if nothing else. As a matter of fact one could argue that the front coming would give us a severe weather risk IF we didn’t have the advancing tropical system moisture coming this way.
There is a path for some locally heavy rains though that will need to be watched.
There will be a heat break later next week followed by more heat towards mid-month.
Here is the feature photo from Jessica Stevens
Joe