Trudging along and it's not too bad!

In the previous post I did on June 28th (read it here) I discussed the screwed up weather pattern.  Now it seems that the atmosphere has settled down into a more typical regime.  Or is it?  Did you happen to catch the news of the tornadoes in Iowa yesterday (14th)?  Tornadoes in July really is not that unusual, especially across higher latitudes of the country.  But what made those stand out to me was the intensity, size and how they were able to form in a not-so-favorable environment, especially the size and strength.  Then we slide down into high plains.  An upper level disturbance moving slowly east out of the Colorado Rockies in moderate flow aloft (July standards), was capable of producing a pretty good swath of precipitation.  In the upper air map below, that disturbance (as of this morning) was across southwest Kansas (the red X).

Unfortunately, not everyone got good rain.  But there were some areas that got really decent rains during a period of extended dryness.  In fact that extended dryness this past 2-3 weeks has shown up on the drought monitor map.

A good chunk of the abnormally dry area analyzed on the map for Kansas got those overnight rains - except for areas near the Oklahoma border.

As far as rainfall with this overnight event and others in the past 14 days, here is what has fallen in that 14 day period.

The North American Monsoon has been suppressed into Mexico, Arizona and New Mexico but it will make a return.  With that return, there should be other disturbances that should bring at least scattered thunderstorm rainfall to many areas of the high plains for the remainder of July.  Here is the outlook from the Weather Prediction Center for rainfall through next Thursday the 22nd.

I'm still not seeing much evidence of an extended "very hot" period for the rest of July other than a few days of near 100.  I still see a chance that the average monthly temperature for July will be closer to normal, if not below.  The pattern will continue to wind down in August so it's really uncertain what to expect other than perhaps a short period or two of 100-105 degree days (but maybe not many).  Some of the very long range computer models do hint at normal to above normal precipitation for many areas of the high plains.  I'm definitely not ready to jump on that notion, at least not yet.  I'll try do a bit more analyzing on that outlook and discuss that in the next posting.