textproduct: Dodge City

KEY MESSAGES

- An active, wet pattern will continue through Thursday, with periodic rounds of showers and thunderstorms. Some storms will produce severe wind gusts, large hail, and locally heavy/flooding rainfall.

- Below normal afternoon temperatures will continue through Thursday.

- A distinct pattern change is expected this weekend and early next week, with much hotter afternoons, rain chances ending, and strong south winds.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 128 AM CDT Tue Jun 23 2026

As has been mentioned in previous forecast discussions, our mesoscale convective system (MCS) pattern will continue through the end of the week. Specific subsynoptic scale details will be extremely difficult to forecast beyond 24 hours, so the focus of this discussion will be on just that -- the next 24 hours.

During the late night hours, we have seen a small, disorganized cluster of showers and widely scattered thunderstorms develop in a fairly weak 800-700mb warm frontogenetic zone across mainly far west central Kansas. High-resolution CAMs and ensemble systems, particularly the experimental MPAS version of the Rapid Refresh Ensemble Forecast System (REFS), have caught on to this development overnight quite well with timing and placement. The MPAS REFS moves this cluster slowly southeast through the night across southwest Kansas, with redevelopment/enhancement on the southwest edge of this cluster in the 10-13Z time frame across far southwest Kansas along the OK line (using the LPMM Composite Reflectivity field). This new cluster then moves off to the southeast through the mid to late morning hours into northwest Oklahoma with some marginal severe risk associated with this. By late morning/midday, an outflow boundary will likely be left behind this early morning MCS, setting the stage for robust surface-based severe storms near a mesolow somewhere in/around Baca County, Colorado/Cimarron County, Oklahoma. Any storm that develops in this area would probably come very close to Elkhart and likely become a supercell given very good hodograph shape due to excellent veering wind profile just east of the surface mesolow. Other surface-based severe storms would likely form across eastern Colorado, particularly the Palmer Divide area. Most models and especially HREF and REFS ensemble systems show another strong signal of a rather well-organized MCS moving east-southeast across western Kansas late tonight (Tuesday Night). Should this materialize, then Wednesday temperatures will likely struggle to get out of the 70s with Wednesday evening's thunderstorm episode likely focused out across eastern Colorado again.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z WEDNESDAY/

Issued at 1020 AM CDT Tue Jun 23 2026

A complicated TAF package with amendments expected. Radar imagery depicted numerous rain showers and limited thunder around the airports at 15z Tue. Widespread IFR/LIFR stratus persisted as well per 15z surface observations. Consensus of short term models shows stratus persisting for most, if not all, of this TAF period, and this trend was followed in the TAFs. Have very low confidence regarding convective trends this period. Model agreement is poor, and will need to make adjustments on radar trends with time. As such, convective mentions in the initial 18z TAF issuance are limited. Outside of thunderstorms, winds will be light, mainly with an easterly component.

DDC WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

None.