textproduct: Dodge City

KEY MESSAGES

- Areas of fog, possibly dense, developing toward sunrise. Any dense fog areas will shift north toward I-70 through the morning and persist through midday

- The next storm system Friday and Friday Night will likely bring widespread rains northward with 0.50" or more rain (50-65% chance for Liberal, Dodge City, Larned and points east and south).

- An unsettled weather pattern will likely continue into early next week with perhaps a larger scale storm across the central portion of the country early next week.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 132 AM CDT Tue Oct 27 2026

The last of the rain was slowly falling apart and moving northeast as a subtle shortwave trough embedded within an active southern branch of the polar jet continued to push northeast across southern Kansas. A weak cold front moved south yesterday and reached a line from just north of Elkhart-Hugoton to around Dodge City to near Saint John at 06Z (1 AM CDT). This front will eventually become a warm front later this morning as warm/moist southerly winds advance northward in response to a stronger upstream polar jet streak moving across the Northern Rockies.

As the frontal zone advances slowly north through this morning, areas of fog will develop in favorable easterly upslope winds along/just north of the front. We have added in areas of fog in the Wx grids, and even though we have not issued a headline (yet) for dense fog, it is something the overnight shift will need to monitor closely for possible widespread dense fog in the roughly 5 AM to 11 AM time frame. Regardless of fog development or not,d low stratus cloud will be widespread and very difficult to scatter out much of the day Tuesday. This will have an impact on temperatures, and we have lowered these as well toward the latest 00Z REFS 50th percentile temperatures. Trego and Ellis County will struggle to get above the mid to upper 50s in the afternoon, so the official forecast up along I-70 may still be a bit too warm. That being said, the air mass south of the front advancing northward is quite warm and moist with dewpoints in the upper 50s to around 60F, which is rather anomalous for 27 October.

On Wednesday, with west-southwest flow aloft, southwest Kansas will be well into the warm/moist air mass, and this will be reflected at the surface with afternoon temperatures well into the mid to upper 70s. As the Northern Rockies storm system(s) push east across the Dakotas, southwest flow aloft will continue across western Kansas, and this will keep the warm/moist air mass across our region as the next rather substantial southern stream/subtropical Pacific jet enters northern Mexico and eventually Southwest and West Texas by the time we get to late Friday into the early weekend. A shortwave trough will emerge in the left-exit region of the extended subtropical jet over West Texas and lift north-northeast toward southern Kansas by late Friday-Friday Evening. This subtropical disturbance will also have unabated access to anomalously high gulf moisture which will advance northward and support a fairly robust rainfall event, again, across Southern into portions of Central Plains. It will all come down to storm track for southwest Kansas, with heavier precipitation favored more across West Texas, pushing into the Panhandles and adjacent southwest Kansas generally south of the Arkansas River. The latest 01Z NBM does have 0.50" prob of exceedance in the 50-65% range for this Friday into early Saturday system.

Going beyond into late weekend/early next week, more and more global model ensemble members are suggesting a constructive phasing of the northern polar jet stream with the active subtropical jet into a large mid-latitude cyclone that would be capable of widespread moderate/heavy rain and thunderstorm activity. These are all just early signals at this point, and the focus initially will be on fine- tuning the rainfall forecast for Friday-Saturday.

AVIATION /12Z TAFS THROUGH 12Z WEDNESDAY/

Issued at 610 AM CDT Tue Oct 27 2026

Widespread IFR cigs/vsbys due to prevailing low level stratus and areas of dense fog are expected to persist through mid/late morning. Conditions are expected to begin improving generally after 16-18Z as fog dissipates and stratus begins to lift/scatter out allowing VFR conditions to return west to east through the afternoon. Light and variable winds through late morning are forecast to turn southerly 10 to 20kt this afternoon as surface high pressure in Nebraska shifts eastward during the day.

DDC WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

Dense Fog Advisory until 10 AM CDT /9 AM MDT/ this morning for KSZ043-044-061>064-074>078.