Good morning bloggers,
A raincoat & umbrella are recommended today! It is a wet morning across the KC metro area with some of the heaviest rain from this long-duration rain event moving in from the east now.
This band of rain is drifting in from the east and beginning to rotate southwest. We are under this upper level low, that is centered south of KC. This is allowing for the rain to move west and southwest. As the upper level low moves away later today and tonight, the bands of rain will begin moving north to south, and it will continue into Friday morning. We will be adding around .50" to 1" of rain to these totals shown below:
So, it is going to rain today. Well, it is raining! The rain will continue into Friday morning, and then it will dry out for Friday Night Lights. Then, we will look ahead to a nice weekend, and then the Monday Night Football forecast.
This map above shows the flow aloft, around 18,000 feet above us. There is a big upper low in Canada that has a trough stretching west (black dashed line) into Montana. That is the northern branch of the jet stream, and this developing pattern will send some colder air our way. There is a weak southern branch of the jet stream, and the arrows point to the weak disturbances. Some of the models have one of these disturbances strong enough to bring rain/snow into our area Monday night or Tuesday. This latest GFS model (American Model) shows the disturbances as too weak to bring us any significant precipitation for the game Monday night. But, this same model had a stronger disturbance just yesterday. For Monday Night Football, we would like to see this trend of weaker disturbances, and then we can take the chance of rain/snow out of the forecast.
We currently have a 30% to 40% chance Monday into Tuesday. This means there is a 60% to 70% chance it stays dry. Watch our percentages. If we raise the chances, then that means one of those disturbances is a bit stronger. If we lower the chances, then that means that the disturbances are so weak that any rain/snow would fall apart before getting here.
This next map shows a band of rain and snow near the Nebraska border Monday morning. This model showed this area falling apart as it moved into KC. Let's see how the models do today.
Could we have our first inch of snow in the next week, or will it wait until Christmas or later? Go to KSHB.com/Contests to enter the snowflake contest. When do you think we will have our first inch of snow?
Thank you for spending a few minutes of your day reading the weather blog, and sharing in this weather experience. Have a great day & have that umbrella ready.
Gary
