textproduct: Kansas City/Pleasant Hill

KEY MESSAGES

* Extreme Heat Warning through Thursday evening.

* Most areas will dry out this week with the next widespread small chance (20-30%) for rain holding off until Independence weekend (Saturday Night/Sunday).

DISCUSSION

Issued at 141 PM CDT Sun Jun 28 2026

We expect to be locked into a hot and dry pattern through at least Thursday, but probably through Saturday (Independence Day). NBM box and whisker plots for the KC metro area indicate high confidence of continued highs in the 90s with 100-110 heat index values through Saturday July 4th. We start to see more model uncertainty around Sunday July 5th with a possible upper trough/surface cold front working into the region.

Through Thursday we are only seeing a 2-3 degree model spread in KC between the 25th and 75th percentile and about 1 degree warmer each day. Therefore, that is some high confidence heat. The NBM currently indicates that the warmest days of the period will be Friday and Saturday (July 4th) just ahead of the next upper shortwave/surface cold front. Therefore, if this model trend continues we will need to extend the Extreme Heat Warning through July 4th.

The western United States upper trough is impressively deep for this late in June and there is video of snow falling over the mountain passes of western Wyoming. The upper ridge across the southeastern United States is also noteworthy and responsible for our heat. The battle zone this week between the western trough and southeastern ridge will keep most of the storms confined to the Dakotas and possibly down into Nebraska. Occasional overnight Nebraska storms will try to work east, but will run into our unfavorable airmass with most storms dieing out prior to reaching our area. Will start carrying just a very small 20% chance of Nebraska storms making it into our northwestern zones during overnight periods mainly Tuesday night and beyond. The strongest upper trough with the best chance to reach our forecast area and beat the upper ridge back is currently slated to reach us around Saturday night (July 4th) or Sunday. That's still a long way off and thus plenty of timing and strength uncertainty with that possible system.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z MONDAY/

Issued at 1220 PM CDT Sun Jun 28 2026

It will be a breezy but quiet/VFR period for our TAF sites. Southerly winds will gust to over 30 mph at times this afternoon before weakening into the 20 to 25 mph range after sunset this evening. The wind will remain breezy out of the south on Monday. We could see a few heat of the day low level cumulus clouds this afternoon and again tomorrow, but VFR ceilings are expected to continue.

EAX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

MO...Extreme Heat Warning until midnight CDT Thursday night for MOZ001>008-011>017-020>025-028>033-037>040-043>046-053- 054. KS...Extreme Heat Warning until midnight CDT Thursday night for KSZ025-057-060-102>105.