Good Tuesday, bloggers,
With school out and event season ramping up, summer certainly feels like it is in motion here in Kansas City!
Technically, summer does not start for another 9 days ... but before we get started on that topic, I wanted to address the elephant in the weather room — El Niño!
There is certainly a lot of hype and chatter going on through the weather community about this topic. So let's get up to speed a bit.
In May, a weak El Niño emerged,and on June 8, NOAA declared the arrival of El Niño. The Climate Prediction Center is now saying "there's an 84% chance of a moderate event and a 56% chance of a strong event." The stronger the El Niño, the more likely we will see impacts.
Overall, this isn't something we watch closely here in KC during the summer because El Niño events tend to be low impact for us during this time. This is mainly because the jet stream is weaker and farther north during the summer (and one of El Niño's big impacts is on the jet stream).
Now that all being said, there is some research that has pointed to there being an impact during the summer of a developing El Niño.
"During the summer of developing El Niño events, temperatures across the Midwest were slightly cooler than normal. This trend was strongest when Oceanic Niño Index values were already nearing a moderate El Niño during the summer months," according to a recent study by the Midwestern Regional Climate Center.
This is a standard we are currently approaching and is most likely why the CPC has Kansas City in the "equal chances" zone for summer temperatures being above or below average.
So let's look a little deeper. When you compare current sea surface temperatures (SSTs) to the last strong El Niño event, there are certainly some big similarities.
Here's a look at the current SSTs. See the big red streak coming off western South America, that's El Niño.
It's been 7-8 years since we've seen a big El Niño set up, the last time being 2015-2016.
So let's take a look back at the SSTs from June that year. Check it out. What an eerily similar map!
So what does this tell us?
El Niño is here and most likely will be here for the winter. But the strength of it and its peak is still unknown, so don't panic or buy into the hype (yet!)
You really have to wait until September-October to understand what this will mean for KC and our upcoming winter. As for this summer, while a moderately developing El Niño has been associated with cooler temperatures, our 10-day isn't following that trend.
The first day of summer is June 21, and we are forecasting an above-average start to the season.
The pattern that is looking to set up next week could leave us void of rain chances while simultaneously heating things up.
Here comes Summer... while it's fairly common to see high pressure set up in the southwest... it will certainly help us kick off the season on a "warm" note. @KSHB41 #41weather pic.twitter.com/moI3UGXJvy
— ☀️ Cassie Wilson (@CassieKSHB) June 13, 2023
When we see this type of pattern set up, our only hope is for "ridge riders"... what I like to call storms that roll along the edge of high pressure. To get this, we need an active flow to be impacting the Rockies and those storms to feed into Kansas, plus have the set up to nudge them toward Kansas City.
Not the best hope for us, but this will certainly be something we will watch for!
In the meantime, the only storm chances we have on the 10-day are for Friday and Saturday. And these are "ridge rider" types as well.
Friday, a weak shortwave looks to round the ridge of high pressure we have holding this week and spark some storms by Friday night. This will be a weak front and eventually get absorbed by the ridge of high pressure quickly giving us a quieter start into Saturday.
However, another shortwave looks to develop out of southwestern Kansas Saturday ... and this system is showing signs that it could be enhanced by the low-level jet Saturday night into Sunday. So we will just put it down as something to keep an eye on for Father's Day weekend.
Make sure to check back for updates!
