Wednesday - A slight chance for showers or drizzle early. Becoming partly cloudy late. High: 70
Wednesday night – Partly cloudy. Low: 53
Thursday – Partly cloudy. High: 76
Friday - Partly cloudy. High: 80
Saturday - Partly cloudy. High: 87
Sunday - Partly cloudy. High: 90
The Storm Prediction Center has placed the area under a Tornado Watch until 8pm tonight.
Thunderstorms are beginning to fire across parts of eastern Nebraska, and will move to the southeast as we progress through the evening.
NOTE: As I’ll be busy doing things with the family this evening, chances are that I will NOT be opening the chat room if severe weather moves into the area. I’ll announce on Twitter if I open it up.
Friday - Mostly cloudy. A chance for AM showers… maybe lasting into the early afternoon. High: 53
Friday night – Mostly clear. Low: 37
Saturday - Mostly sunny. High: 62
Easter Sunday - Mostly cloudy with a chance for showers and t-storms. High: 57
Monday - Mostly cloudy with a chance for rain. High: 50
Tuesday - Partly cloudy. High: 64
Music to head into the weekend
“Restless for the Sun”
Jimmie Bratcher
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
A minor change would place us in an area of 3-4 inches. At this point, I would be very surprised if this storm makes a dramatic enough shift that we don’t get snow. It’s still possible, but I don’t see it happening.
Here are the details:
As I mentioned yesterday, the most important thing for us to watch for our snow potential on Saturday is what kind of cooling will we see as a result of the lift within our storm system. This lift can cool the atmosphere beyond simply the movement of cold air in from the north and change an all rain event to one that can dump heavy snow. Kansas City is no stranger to this kind of setup. The “October Surprise” was one such event. Traditional methods of forecasting snow had to be thrown out as this dynamic cooling took over and changed a rain event to a snow event.
But, will we see this happen tonight and Saturday? This is a very strong and dynamic storm system that WILL generate it’s own cold air… and in a couple places. First off, we’ll see a large pool of cold air form near and just behind the track of the upper-level low. Right now, it looks like the upper-level low will track across Oklahoma, northern Arkansas, and southeast Missouri. This may be JUST too far south for Kansas City to see the cold pool, but I’m certainly not counting it out.
The other area we could see this happen is in what we call the deformation band on the northwest side of the storm system. Here, we will likely see lift in the form of convection (the lifting of air by thermal processes). In stronger areas of convection, we will likely see some thundersnow.
While some of the parameters hint that we’ll see rain until Saturday morning, this dynamic cooling has a strong possiblity of trumping this, and we could see some incredible snowfall effect the area with snow beginning tonight.
If this cooling does not take place, our chance for snow goes down CONSIDERABLY. This would cause the change over to happen much later, after the main band of precipitation wains. As an example, here is one computer model’s (NAM) forecast of what could happen:
This is just one computer model’s forecast, and it has been the most aggressive with snow totals. More data is still coming in from this morning’s computer models.
I still believe KC could see 8 inches of snow out of this storm, with areas just south seeing 10-12 inches. A minor change would place us in an area of 3-4 inches. At this point, I would be very surprised if this storm makes a dramatic enough shift that we don’t get snow. It’s still possible, but I don’t see it happening.
Of course, I’ll have updates here and via the KCWeather Twitter feed as this storm evolves.
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