With the latest episodes of precipitation, there continues to be a bit more improvement on the long term drought conditions across much of the high plains. The Flint Hills region continues to suffer.
Looking at this afternoons satellite image...it's busy!
The upper high across the Rockies has become very strong and has shut off most of the North American Monsoon, or at least tempered it a little. There was also a very vigorous upper low approaching the far Pacific Northwest. There may be some wave energy propagation going on based on what is expected with the little itty bitty X over northeast Kansas. That feature is expected to move south during the weekend and will interact with lots of thunderstorms developing across north and west Texas. If all things work out, that little system should gain strength as the result of a lot of latent heat release from the storms. It appears almost certain that this will occur. However, what happens next is in question.
Since the steering flow aloft is chaotic and very weak, the movement of that eventual system is very much uncertain. It "should" drift north late Sunday into mid-week next week. It will likely move randomly as addition thunderstorms develop every day. Where it ends up will determine eventual amounts of rainfalls and location of the heaviest. The margin of error will be huge! Here is the outlook from the Weather Prediction Center for the next 7 days with the majority of what you see across Kansas and Oklahoma falling by mid week.
Don't count on specific values at this point but the message is clear - there should be a really good chance for beneficial rains across southern Kansas into Oklahoma and central Texas. It "could" be a little farther north and west - it just depends on that eventual track. Which means? Yes, it "could" be farther south and east and much of the high plains gets nothing. Bottom line - check with local forecasts for your area (preferably the NWS).
I did a presentation yesterday at the Kansas Grazing Lands Coalition Range School and one of the things I discussed was the Madden Julian Oscillation. An outlook or prediction I can make going into September is based off of the MJO. The following graph shows where the MJO has been and what is expected moving forward.
The current MJO, which was unseasonably strong for a July event, is currently decaying rapidly as it quickly moves into the southern Hemisphere. The remnants may regenerate across Africa and the western Hemisphere by the last week of August. The prediction is rather convincing for this to happen, at least it should form into another MJO event, just maybe not that strong. The impacts on the United States often mirrors what has happened during past events. A composite of MJO sensible weather that occurred in the past during August/September can be seen on the following charts - first for temperatures...
and for precipitation....
The charts increase confidence that the northern plains will be heating up and remaining mostly dry for probably the balance of August. For the high plains, this increases confidence that temperatures should remain around to perhaps below normal going into the last of August. As far as precipitation, the end of August into the first week of September may see increased odds for additional rainfall. Confidence is not extremely high, I would just be leaning in that direction. Of course, this all hinges on IF the MJO can get going again and there is not other atmosphere forcings that counter the MJO.
More on this in the next post which I hope to do later next week.
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