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Eastern Jackson County, MO —
Meteorologists continue to paint a bleak picture of the drought that’s starting to look like the worst in a quarter century.
Officials on Thursday upgraded the severity of the metro area’s drought and said the 30-, 60- and 90-day outlooks suggest it’s likely to be hotter and drier than normal well into the fall.
“It doesn’t bode well for any kind of improvement,” said meteorologist Chris Bowman of the National Weather Service.
The heat is compounding the problem, and the Weather Service on Thursday extended the metro area’s excessive heat warning through 7 p.m. next Wednesday. Highs around 100 are expected every day, and officials warn people to take it easy, drink lots of water and be mindful that high heat can cause illness and even death.
The metro area falls into a band running across the middle part of Missouri that’s now classified as being in extreme drought.
Officials use a five-step scale to portray the extent of drought: “abnornally dry,” then “moderate,” “severe,” “extreme” and “exceptional” drought. The metro area has gone from the second of those to the fourth in about a month.
“It’s been a pretty rapid deterioration,” Bowman said.
Much of the country is in drought, but only a few pockets no bigger than a handful of counties – parts of Georgia, central Arkansas, western Kansas – are in “exceptional drought.” Most of Missouri is in severe drought, and two areas are in the extreme category: the southeast part of the state and an undulating strip from Kansas City to Carrollton to Columbia to Hannibal. (On the Kansas side, that strip runs from Johnson County to Topeka, Ottawa and Emporia, and then it widens and takes in most of the western half of the state.)
The math tells the story. In a typical year, Kansas City gets a shade under 39 inches of rain. Through mid-July, about 22 inches should have fallen but instead the area has gotten 13 and a quarter inches. Most of that rain normally would come in April, May and June.
Instead, from April 1 through Tuesday, just 5.49 inches of rain fell at Kansas City International Airport. That’s one-third of the normal 16.81 inches, and the second driest such period on record. The driest was in 1911.
KCI is where the official records are kept. The Weather Service recorded a half inch more at the downtown airport from April 1 to July 17 and three inches more in Lee’s Summit, but nowhere in the metro had even half of the normal rainfall in that period.
Meteorologists continue to paint a bleak picture of the drought that’s starting to look like the worst in a quarter century.
Officials on Thursday upgraded the severity of the metro area’s drought and said the 30-, 60- and 90-day outlooks suggest it’s likely to be hotter and drier than normal well into the fall.
“It doesn’t bode well for any kind of improvement,” said meteorologist Chris Bowman of the National Weather Service.
The heat is compounding the problem, and the Weather Service on Thursday extended the metro area’s excessive heat warning through 7 p.m. next Wednesday. Highs around 100 are expected every day, and officials warn people to take it easy, drink lots of water and be mindful that high heat can cause illness and even death.
The metro area falls into a band running across the middle part of Missouri that’s now classified as being in extreme drought.
Officials use a five-step scale to portray the extent of drought: “abnornally dry,” then “moderate,” “severe,” “extreme” and “exceptional” drought. The metro area has gone from the second of those to the fourth in about a month.
“It’s been a pretty rapid deterioration,” Bowman said.
Much of the country is in drought, but only a few pockets no bigger than a handful of counties – parts of Georgia, central Arkansas, western Kansas – are in “exceptional drought.” Most of Missouri is in severe drought, and two areas are in the extreme category: the southeast part of the state and an undulating strip from Kansas City to Carrollton to Columbia to Hannibal. (On the Kansas side, that strip runs from Johnson County to Topeka, Ottawa and Emporia, and then it widens and takes in most of the western half of the state.)
The math tells the story. In a typical year, Kansas City gets a shade under 39 inches of rain. Through mid-July, about 22 inches should have fallen but instead the area has gotten 13 and a quarter inches. Most of that rain normally would come in April, May and June.
Instead, from April 1 through Tuesday, just 5.49 inches of rain fell at Kansas City International Airport. That’s one-third of the normal 16.81 inches, and the second driest such period on record. The driest was in 1911.
KCI is where the official records are kept. The Weather Service recorded a half inch more at the downtown airport from April 1 to July 17 and three inches more in Lee’s Summit, but nowhere in the metro had even half of the normal rainfall in that period.
The driest July on record, by the way, came in 2003, with 0.12 inches of rain. Through last Saturday, KCI recorded 0.10 inches. The storms in the wee hours of Thursday morning dropped 0.02 inches at KCI, so at the moment it’s a tie.
Bowman pointed to 1988 – the fifth driest on record in Kansas City – as a comparable year to what 2012 is shaping up to be. That year, the area got just 24.22 inches of rain. Records go back 125 years, and the driest year was 1953, with 20.93 inches. Recent dry years have included 2002 (24.77 inches) and 2003 (27.95 inches).
The heat and drought have brought up references to the Dust Years of the 1930s, but Bowman cautions about pushing that comparison too far. Five of those years – 1932, 1933, 1934, 1936 and 1937 – are all in the 14 driest years on record.
What makes that period remarkable, Bowman said, is that those drought years came in succession. There’s no way of knowing what lies beyond 2012.
National Weather Service, Pleasant Hill: www.weather.gov/kc
