Happy Christmas Eve, blog readers —
It's a gray and foggy day in Kansas City with Rudolph gearing up to help Santa guide his sleigh tonight.
Expect this baseline gray nature to hold for the rest of the week. The fog will turn to rain by Thursday night into Friday.
Christmas Eve travel around the Great Plains includes showers along I-70 this afternoon between Columbia and St. Louis and thunderstorms south of Joplin into Arkansas.
We continue to tap into a moisture field that is hanging just to our south, which will keep patchy fog chances in the forecast for the next couple of nights.
Fog will remain patchy with some visibility to be reduced below 3/4 mile. Conditions should be slightly more favorable across north-central Missouri.
So, as we look at the holiday lineup and how the weather will impact your celebrations, the main focus is just how dreary this weather is.
For most, Christmas Eve should be gray and slightly above freezing with patchy fog overnight.
By Christmas Day, we start a little warming trend, but we will only warm about 5° above normal for this time of year.
The one positive with cloud cover as we head into sunset to kick off Hanukkah is temperatures will remain steady.
By Kwanzaa, the rain looks to try and finally push through, but it may wait until the overnight period.
Rain chances are in the forecast Thursday night into Friday but remain low-end impact.
The main core of this rain will track south of KC, leaving us with a lighter load but rainy nonetheless.
There is a chance rain lingers into Friday and then returns again Friday night.
But as we peek ahead to the last weekend of 2024, we finally shake the gray!
Clouds will peel back slowly Saturday with more sunshine Sunday. Both days should be in the mid-50s, easily!
Next week, there still isn't a clear sign for storms or cold air to roll in.
We are seeing signs that a zonal flow will set up to close out 2024. This means the jet stream will flatten out.
In order to get storms, we need to get some waves going.
Now, this doesn't mean we won't see quick and small surface systems move through.
A zonal flow just kind of removes the big storm development or big movements of hot or cold air.
So, that being said, I'm leaning on a near-normal New Year's Eve.
Have a happy and safe holiday!
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