Update - August 12, 2014

The previous post on July 30, 2014 (click here) was discussing the heavy rain event that was progressing across the area. There were a couple of locations that had excessive VERY rainfall.  Once was out in eastern Colorado near Eads where amount of 7.64" was measured!  Another was just northeast of Greensburg that had 5.03 inches!  The following map depicts the total ending on the 30th...

For the month of July there was quite a bit of variance across the area, which is very typical for the warm season where the majority of precipitation falls from thunderstorms.  Thunderstorms produce highly variable precipitation rates, depending on many factors.  The following map is for July....

There were only a couple of days that had "hot" temperatures above 100.  At Dodge City we've only had 2 such days this year.  (I have mentioned several times in previous posts that there probably wouldn't be many 100s this summer and so far that has worked out).  The 15th through the 18th had anomalously cold weather with daytime temperatures staying in the low to mid 60s on two of the days and only in the 70s on the other two.  Did this stretch do anything to growth of the corn and sorghum?  The number of growing degree days will undoubtedly be less than normal for this growing season.  This "cold" also has stretched across much of the corn belt.  It will be interesting to see IF these crops can mature before the first freeze arrives.

For the next week or so the pattern will be characterized by a continued North American Monsoon (NAM) and periodic cold front passages.  The  satellite image from a couple a days ago shows several interesting features.  One is the low and moisture that has finally impacted the Pacific Northwest.  Another feature that has been persistent this summer is the little low associated with the NAM poised to move north into the Great Basin and will be moving into the plains (mostly northern) the last half of this week.  Another feature that REALLY has caught my attention is the system over the Great Lakes and which brought very excessive rain to New England this week along with colder air.  If this feature returns in September then we can expect a very early FREEZE across the corn belt.  Could be a major price mover as we get closer?  I'll keep an eye out for this possibility and post at a later date.  Here is the aforementioned map...

With the recent rains this summer the drought has improved at most locations.  There are still those "unlucky" ones that have missed out on the big rains.  Surely that luck will improve?

I'll be posting my thoughts on the fall and winter later this month.  The well advertised El Nino has NOT developed yet.  But, slowly but surely, it's starting to look like it may be developing.  The latest SOI chart below shows the progress.  Remember the indices need to be strongly negative for about 3 months for an official El Nino event.  It's complicated but El Nino is not the only feature that will calls the shots for later this year and into 2015.  Again, I'll post something on this a little later this month.

If you find this blog useful, please pass the link on.  There doesn't seem to be much traffic right now.  As I posted earlier during the spring, this is NOT an official posting from the NWS.  This is ONLY my thoughts.