Good Thursday morning blog readers —
The snow has come to an end. Well mostly. Take a look at some of the reports regionally through the Plains; this was a beast of a snow event.
In Kansas City, we rounded out mostly in the trace to 2 inch range.
Our Great Plains snow event is wrapping up and while Kansas City only saw light accumulations around Trace to 0.5" there were a few pockets through Missouri where we picked up 2-3" of snow. @KSHB41 #moxwx #kswx
— ☀️ Cassie Wilson (@CassieKSHB) December 27, 2023
Chillicothe: 2"
Trenton: 2.9"
Utica: 1.5"
KCI: 0.3" pic.twitter.com/4ppQRbaYsI
Still snowing
This system is a slow mover and with that, a few more bands could wrap in north and east of Kansas City tonight.
But anything left will be mainly flurries with little impact left. The main storm track is moving east, but moisture continues to wrap about the back side of this system, and high pressure trailing it continues to wrap in the cold air.
This combination will allow very light snow bands to continue to develop through Thursday night into Friday, but all impacts remain very low end.
Expect flurries and light snow east of Kansas City this evening and into your Friday morning. Otherwise we stay gray and chilly.
Today and Friday will be gray and winter-like with a brisk north wind holding steady. Overcast to mostly cloudy skies with highs in the upper 30s are expected.
Couple that with a north to northwest wind coming in around 10-20 miles-per-hour and we will be stuck with a wind chill in the 20s for both Thursday and Friday.
What's Next: New Year's Eve front
The arctic air has so far this season remained home with no travel plans quite yet.
So as we watch our New Year's Eve forecast, we are tracking a mainly dry cold front to drop in from central Canada to bring a Canadian chill — not an arctic chill, but still a chill.
Systems that drop in from central Canada tend to be dry in nature so we will mainly be watching temps with this system.
Overall looking at the weekend we at least get our sunshine back.
Saturday even has a little "December warmth" tucked into the forecast, but come Chiefs Sunday, expect to be back near freezing.
Break out all your cold weather tricks if you are heading to GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium Sunday. It will likely be a little breezy as well which means wind chills will be in the forecast.
Into New Year's Eve temps could drop into the 20s and even teens on the back side of this front.
A brisk north flow will hold steady as well, so brace yourself to bring in the New Year frozen. Quite the difference from last years balmy 63 degrees on NYE.
What's New: Watching the West Coast
Our main storm track for the month of January will be to watch for systems to come in from our south as a strong El Niño holds steady.
The CPC outlook for the month of January screams El Niño. So with that we have to watch for the bulk of moisture to swing by south. The struggle will be getting these system to drift north enough to impact KC.
But there is a nice atmospheric river setting up to move onto the West Coast by the end of the 1st week of January.
This is a storm to watch, but right now it is tracking to clip to our south around Jan. 5-7. Can we nudge it north, I'm not giving up hope quite yet so stay tuned.
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