textproduct: Kansas City/Pleasant Hill

KEY MESSAGES

- One More Cold Night

- Warm Up This Week

- Next Rain Chances Come Late Wednesday Night into Thursday

DISCUSSION

Issued at 147 PM CST Sun Dec 14 2025

High pressure is the story of the day. As of 20z, the center of the high is directly over Missouri. The deep trough axis is over the Great Lakes into the Ohio River Valley. There is some cloud cover in far eastern Missouri that is on the backside of the mid-level cyclonic flow. The weak pressure gradient has led to light winds today. Insolation managed to get temperatures back into the 20s for western MO and eastern KS. The further east from there, temperatures were only in the teens. Calm winds and mostly clear skies will allow for efficient radiational cooling overnight, resulting in one more cold night. Wind chills will be in the single digits slightly above zero for the western portions of the forecast area, while wind chills are forecast to dip slightly below zero, especially for our northeast counties. Due the dry air in place, fog is not expected despite calm winds and stronger radiational cooling. Perhaps some river valleys may fog in a little bit.

Northwesterly upper-level flow will continue push AVA and the surface anticyclone into the Gulf Region. Pressure gradient on back side of this system will make for gusty winds during Monday afternoon, perhaps between 20-25 MPH. A mid-level open-wave trough begins to exit the southwestern CONUS. This created a compact H5 ridge that passes through the southern Plains, while another ridge axis moves across the Rockies. The pattern somewhat resembles a Rex Block pattern, but stronger PV anomaly off the Pacific Northwest sends a few shots of vorticity to deamplify the ridge moving across the Rockies, allowing the short-wave out of the southwest CONUS to progress. Modest dCVA into the High Plains of Texas will allow for some lift and attempt surface cyclogenesis, though the positive tilt to the mid-level trough axis will create a disruption to the process. But with the exiting surface anticyclone into the Gulf and slightly eastward, this will setup low-level southwesterly flow into the Missouri River Valley, and will start to see a gradual upward trend in temperatures, with Monday hitting in the lower 40s for most of the area, and our northeast counties seeing the upper 30s. This will continue into Tuesday, with potential for areas from KC Metro and southward to hit the lower 50s. Monday and Tuesday, moisture transport will be slower, and while there will be potential for mid- level height falls, the strongest areas of vorticity will miss our area to the south and to the north, which will keep the forecast dry Monday and Tuesday. Using NBM membership, probabilities for most locations in our area of hitting at least 50F on Tuesday is upwards of 70 percent, a bit lower for our northeast out near Kirksville. Wednesday, modest mid-level trough axis moves through, along with 850mb thermal ridge that will provide the best WAA through this week, potentially sending temps into the mid 50s for most of the area. Northeast Missouri may stay in the upper 40s. Inner-quartile spread for high temperatures Wednesday does start to show larger spread, this may be attributed to differences in expected cloud cover amongst various ensemble members.

Stronger mid-level trough is progged to dig southward late Wednesday into Thursday, resulting in a stronger surface low across the northern Plains and upper Midwest, with cold front extending into the lower Missouri River Valley. GEFS and other ensemble suites have pulled probabilities for detectable precipitation further west than it had in previous days. Still a decent amount of spread in the timing and depth of this trough toward the middle-end of next week. Temperatures look to remain warm enough for this to be mostly rain. There are also low end probabilities for some CAPE to develop which result in a few rumbles of thunder. This will bring cooler temperatures by Friday. Current deterministic NBM forecast does warm conditions up by next weekend, but a slightly deeper dive shows a large spread for the inner-quartile values for multiple parameters.

AVIATION /00Z TAFS THROUGH 00Z MONDAY/

Issued at 515 PM CST Sun Dec 14 2025

High pressure will sustain mainly clear skies and VFR conditions through the period. The lone aviation impact will be southwesterly gusts early Monday morning through late Monday afternoon/evening. Gusts subside around and after 00z Monday evening, becoming light and variable late Monday evening.

EAX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

MO...None. KS...None.