textproduct: Topeka

KEY MESSAGES

- Showers and thunderstorms are possible (50-70%) Saturday night.

- A warm up begins tomorrow with highs generally in the 80s and near 90 early next week.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 203 PM CDT Wed May 6 2026

19Z water vapor imagery showed energy over the southwestern US phasing with the northern stream to form an elongated upper level trough from Northern Mexico to the Hudson Bay in Canada. A shortwave was noted over the central Rockies and a second shortwave riding over the upper ridge across British Columbia. Surface obs showed high pressure across the central plains with the frontal boundary well south along the TX gulf coast and LA.

Dry air within the surface ridge is forecast to limit precip chances tonight as the upper trough axis swings southeast of the forecast area. Then northwest flow is progged to setup through the weekend and into next week. A weak shortwave looks to propagate across northeast KS Friday morning. There are some indications from the models for enough moisture to allow for some isolated showers to pop up. So have POPs in the 10 to 15 percent range. A better defined shortwave is still progged to impact the area Saturday night. Potential for severe storms is dependent on how much moisture is able to move north in advance of the shortwave. The 12Z NAM/GFS develop some weak instability while keeping the warm sector along the Red River valley. So for now concerns for severe weather are low. There is pretty good agreement among the models in the overall synoptic pattern so have stuck with the NBM which has most of the area with POPs from 50 to 70 percent. Heading into next week, models don't really have a strong feature to focus precip chances with and the 00Z ensemble progs were somewhat noisy with regards to precip chances. So precip chances are generally less than 20 percent with northwest flow expected to persist through Wednesday.

The mean westerlies are progged to move back north with a weaker southern stream upper level jet. This should favor the cooler temperatures remaining north of the forecast area and allow for a warm up across the central plains. Spreads are pretty reasonable through Sunday but tend to increase next week. Aside from a slight cool down Sunday with a northerly wind, highs Saturday and early next week look to be in the 80s and near 90. Tuesday is expected to be the warmest day with highs around 90. But confidence in the 90 degree temps could be better as much of the ensembles including the AIGEFS and HGEFS have median temps in the middle 80s. In any case a good warm up is expected over the next seven days with temps above normal.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z THURSDAY/

Issued at 1142 AM CDT Wed May 6 2026

Dry air with the surface ridge will limit precip chances to less than 10 percent as mid and high clouds gradually shift south through tonight. VFR conditions should prevail.

TOP WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

None.