Friday Night: Mostly Clear. Low: 42°F
Saturday: Mostly Sunny. High: 69°F
Saturday Night: Partly Cloudy. Low: 38°F
Sunday: Mostly Sunny. High: 50°F
Sunday Night: Mostly Clear. Low: 25°F
=============================================================================
General Discussion:
The weather from the past couple days has kicked out most moisture in the atmosphere inducing very dry weather throughout the weekend. A few clouds will be seen in our area at points of the weekend but only for short periods. The real weather concern for this weekend will be a very large temperature shift that will come Saturday evening as temperatures will continuously drop into early next week. Average high for this weekend is 56°F and this St. Patrick’s day will be several degrees lower. Temperatures Sunday night will likely be in the mid 20s, so protect all outdoor vegetation and wear plenty of layers to class on Monday!
-Ebert
=============================================================================
Forecasters: Ebert, Collier
Date Issued: 3/15/2024 5:00 PM CDT
Technical Discussion:
Key Messages:
1. Dry, calmer weather makes its return to the area this weekend.
2. Above average temperatures on Friday and Saturday.
3. A cold front passes through attached to a shortwave trough on Saturday night, leading to a chillier St. Patrick’s Day on Sunday.
A blend of both the 18Z NAM and 18Z GFS were used for this forecast, but in a few cases on moisture, the GFS was picked over NAM.
Missouri is on the tail end of the upper level jet stream that has passed us and is now off to our east. Winds at the upper level are zonal and will continue to be so throughout most of the weekend. Down at the surface, there will be very light winds for the rest of the afternoon. High pressure is building in over Missouri and will keep weather calm in our area for the weekend. No moisture is seen at any level of the atmosphere for Friday so a clear night can be expected with an above average temperature for the night in the lower 40s.
Saturday, the jet stream will build again over Missouri but, will not have a jet streak until it will already be past us to our east. All though the jet stream will be past us, high winds will be present in the afternoon due to a strong shortwave moving across the Great Lakes region. Associated with it, a cold front will sweep across the Midwest and drop our temperatures Saturday night as our winds shift from southwest to northwest. Due to past weather events clearing out most moisture, only a few clouds may be around Saturday afternoon and evening. Soundings show very little moisture between 700mb and 850mb Saturday evening.
Sunday will feature strong northwest winds due to cold air advection as winds could gust up to 25mph. There was some confidence for mostly sunny conditions for the afternoon, but the NAM had some mid level moisture with the shortwave across the Great Lakes. We were more confident in the GFS due to the strong and dry northwesterly flow forecasted. The polar jet will move into area on Sunday which will bring even colder air into Missouri early next week. The temperatures for Sunday will drop to below the average for this weekend with the low being 10 degrees lower then average.
Future forecasters should monitor the cooler temperatures for early next week as well as some possible rain chances for the middle to later part of the work week.
-Ebert