textproduct: Kansas City/Pleasant Hill

KEY MESSAGES

* Roller coaster temperatures this week with below normal temperatures today/tonight, a brief warm up on Tuesday ahead of potentially the coldest air of the season thus far late week.

* Light snow event possible Wednesday night into Thursday.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 202 AM CST Sun Dec 7 2025

Surface low pressure has moved into the Mississippi River Valley with north- northeast flow developing behind the cold front sweeping through the region. This fetch will advect low lying stratus into the region leading to a fairly gray day today. The cloud cover combined with cold air advection will keep temperatures 10-15 degrees below normal today and tonight across eastern Kansas into western Missouri and through tomorrow afternoon as the cold dense air lingers across central and eastern portions of the state on Monday. The low lying clouds will thin and develop some breaks on Monday as southwest flow draws warmer drier air into the region. The effects of the sustained southwest flow will be more noticeable on Tuesday as temperatures warm 5-10 degrees above normal; however, these conditions are not expected to last as a trough deepens into the Upper Midwest and the associated cold front swings through the region on Wednesday. A series of short waves are expected to build southeast in northwest flow aloft and could lead to a light snow event Wednesday night into Thursday. While the entire profile looks to be below freezing for locations north of I-70, the dendritic layer looks to be fairly high between 500-600 mb. Saturation within this layer looks limited in duration, and thus the LREF ensemble only suggests ~10 percent chance of snow amounts over 1" near the Iowa/Missouri border with lesser amount/probabilities farther south.

Outlook for next weekend is interesting in that models are hinting that Hudson Bay Low drags air from the arctic circle south into the central US as a wave moves from western Canada towards the Upper Midwest. Depending on how this wave evolves, interacts with the themal boundary and the trajectory the system takes, additional snow would be possible. At this point, the ECMWF solution is more of an outlier, so have kept the forecast dry beyond Thursday for the time being. What is more certain at this point is the cold air, which has a 30-40 percent chance of remaining in the teens or colder for highs on Saturday.

AVIATION /12Z TAFS THROUGH 12Z MONDAY/

Issued at 517 AM CST Sun Dec 7 2025

MVFR stratus remains across the region today with northerly flow becoming easterly tonight as surface high pressure shifts east across the Upper Midwest.

EAX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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