Potential Drought Relief

[DanielBryan]

Still awhile out but multiple chances for rain & storms beginning Friday.

[shock]

Ha but they will all be east of the turnpike

[1972Shocker]

From what I understand it is too late for this year's wheat crop. Gene Countryman had a gentleman on his show his weekend discussing he drought conditions in Kansas. He said even if Western Kansas was to get a widespread inch of rain it wouldn't do this year's wheat crop much good. He said he has seen a number of wheat fields where the wheat has put on heads but is only 6 inches tall. The problem with that is the wheat will not grow any taller wants it the head has sprouted. In some of these fields he wheat can't be harvested because it's to low for the combines to reach.

He said the good news was that an El Nino was developing in the Pacific and that has generally lead to better levels of precipitation in Kansas in the past. But that won't do the farmers any good this year.

[pinstripers]

Wheat crop will hopefully be half of normal. That's probably optimistic.

[wsushox1]

Need to take a look at Precipitable Water Values. That's what really helped the Mid-July to August storms of last year be really prolific rain producers. PWAT's of 1.5+ were commonplace during the rainy spell last summer. Forecast models are showing values approaching 1.5 inches so any storms that do fire with this system should be decent rain producers.

[DanielBryan]

Need to take a look at Precipitable Water Values. That's what really helped the Mid-July to August storms of last year be really prolific rain producers. PWAT's of 1.5+ were commonplace during the rainy spell last summer. Forecast models are showing values approaching 1.5 inches so any storms that do fire with this system should be decent rain producers.

It'll be east I'm sure.

[pinstripers]

this one looks state-wide. Too late to help the wheat crop, but the cattle industry could benefit.

[wsushox1]

It'll be east I'm sure.

If anything the max precip will be west of ICT.

7-day forecast precipitation.

[Shocker85]

If anything the max precip will be west of ICT.

7-day forecast precipitation.

Oooh, that's purty.

[DUShock]

Please, please, please let it be!

[DanielBryan]

Everything has been either North of i-70 or east of "da turnpike"

[wsushox1]

Everything has been either North of i-70 or east of "da turnpike"

That's what it was supposed to do until tomorrow.

Any rain we could have received yesterday or today would have been a nice bonus though.

[wsushox1]

Is frustrating to see a line of storms approach ICT...break apart and now is likely to redevelop east of the Turnpike.

[SHOCKvalue]

Is frustrating to see a line of storms approach ICT...break apart and now is likely to redevelop east of the Turnpike.

Question, young budding meteorologist:

When that happens is it a direct result of ground (or otherwise latently and locally available) moisture. Meaning, the storm line you are referring to sure appeared to dissipate and re-form in nearly direct correlation with the latest drought monitor maps. Not the first time I have noticed the relationship this season, but I know nothing.

[wsushox1]

Question, young budding meteorologist:

When that happens is it a direct result of ground (or otherwise latently and locally available) moisture. Meaning, the storm line you are referring to sure appeared to dissipate and re-form in nearly direct correlation with the latest drought monitor maps. Not the first time I have noticed the relationship this season, but I know nothing.

Preface: This post is likely to be long-winded.

That's a great questions and one that I don't think there is a well established scientific theory on. Surface-Atmosphere interactions is probably one of the most important problems that faces meteorology right now - there are TONS of people working on this kind of research. Meteorologists have a pretty good understanding of how the general circulations and patterns of the atmosphere work. However, the current state of the surface affects the atmosphere just as the atmosphere obviously affects the surface.

For a storm to occur (or even a cloud) an air parcel must be lifted to a height in which its temperature is cool enough that a cloud can condense. The air parcel can do this by being warmer than the environment or by being "forced" upwards by the convergance of surface wind (when two opposing wind directions meet since the air can't go down it goes up) or by topography. In this case, the line of storms appeared to have been caused by very weak surface convergence in an atmosphere that had little to no "cap" to it. A CAP meaning that a parcel that reaches its condensation level continues to freely rise upwards. The southern portion of the line was in an environment where the air parcels had to be lifted much, much higher to reach its condensation point and had to go even higher to get to a point where they could freely rise up in the atmosphere. It is likely that the surface convergance wasn't strong enough to maintain lifting air parcels to these heights in the atmopsphere.

Another thing is that there is little to no jet-stream in Kansas today. So essentially storms go up, and then fall down in on themselves and weaken. If you look at radar even the most well established areas of storms can't maintain one area that is significantly stronger than the others....it is always shifting as one updraft falls another goes up. So again, this hurt our line of storms as essentially a new updraft had to be formed as the old one died.

So...in regards to answering your question.....yes and no. The height in which an air parcel has to be lifted to reach condensation level is determined by the moisture at the surface and the temperature at the surface. So in a drought stricken area, surface moisture is low and thus surface temperature is higher making the height a parcel has to be "lifted" much higher. However, in regimes where there is a moist air mass in place (greater than 60 degree dewpoint), such as now, this affect is not thought to be as important because the lower level of the atmosphere is generally thought to be "well mixed" caused by wind and turbulence (outside of the canopy layer of the plant). So when a moist airmass is in place it shouldn't effect storms all other things being equal, which in this case I don't think it was (norther part of the line that survived had MUCH lower cloud/condesnation heights and better convergence than southern line that didn't survive to well.)

There is some study that shows that irrigated corn fields in Iowa cause the atmosphere to be more-unstable there so that is a case where the surface characteristics play a role in determining atmospheric properties.