Good Monday evening, everyone. Leave it to Mother Nature to turn our weather setup completely upside down in about a day. After seeing a nice Halloween to wrap up the month of October, cloud cover and rain chances moved in right on schedule to kick off the month of November. It certainly made an impact on temperatures across the area. Looking at Joplin Regional alone, we went from highs in the lower 60s yesterday to lows around 40° this morning before we only topped out in the middle 40s this afternoon.
Let’s break down our weather setup. There are no big players impacting our weather at the surface. Behind our last cold front that’s well to our south and southeast, we have an area of high pressure sitting over eastern Nebraska. All it’s doing is keeping our northeast breeze in place as we head into the overnight and into Tuesday morning.
The real drivers in our changing weather can be found upstairs at the jet stream level. The upper-level wave clearing out of the region was responsible for the increase in cloud cover and our rain chances today. While that clears out, we have another upper-level wave that has developed out in California and Nevada. That’s the next wave on the way in.
As we transition from one upper-level wave to the next, we’ll take advantage of the switch and keep things mainly dry as we get Tuesday started. Other than a few random spots of drizzle, we’ll all have cloudy skies to start Tuesday morning out. While it won’t result in a big drop in temperatures, it will still be a cold start with lows around 39 in Joplin and upper 30s to near 40° outside of the Metro area.
After a dry start to the morning, the approach of the upper-level wave from the west will bring in returning rain chances during the afternoon and certainly close to early Tuesday evening. Rain or not, we’ll all hold on to cloudy skies throughout the day. With a light easterly breeze at 5-10 mph, that will keep temperatures much cooler than normal with highs in the middle to upper 40s.
As the wave pushes into Kansas and Oklahoma for Tuesday evening and into Wednesday, that will keep the chances for scattered rain in place under continued cloudy skies. You can see how the rain chances will be around as we hit the midnight hour heading into Wednesday. That will only allow lows to drop back into the upper 30s and lower 40s. These numbers aren’t cold enough for any early signs of mixed precipitation, it will be a rather cool (if not cold) rain for parts of the area.
While the day will start out with rain chances, the departing upper-level wave will cause the rain chances to start clearing out as we head into Wednesday afternoon. Not only that, the departure will also allow for some peaks of the sun to return by late Wednesday afternoon. Even with that, it will still be unseasonably cool with highs in the upper 40s.
Even though the departing upper-level low will result in quiet skies for Thursday and Friday, it will also lead to mostly clear skies for Thursday and Friday morning. Couple that with the jet stream still well to our south, we’ll have lows dropping into the lower to middle 30s for both of those mornings. That still means the possibility of our first frost (or light freeze) of the season this week is still on the table. On the other hand, we’ll have highs back to 50° on Thursday and into the middle 50s on Friday.
Our upcoming weekend is still looking pretty good with partly sunny skies and no rain chances trying to sneak in. With the returning jet evident on Saturday’s setup below, that will sned highs back into the lower to middle 60s for Saturday and Sunday.
Sticking with Doug’s pattern, we’ll get next week started on a mild note with highs staying in the middle 60s for Monday (maybe a few upper 60s as well). Once we get into the middle of next week, we’ll watch for another system out west head our way with rain chances.
Doug has you covered with his long range forecast out to the Thanksgiving weekend down below. Have a good night and a great Tuesday!
Nick
November 9th-13th: After a mild Monday, we’ll be cooling down for a couple of days. Rain Wednesday and Thursday while we stay cool. Back to mild temperatures by the weekend.
November 14th-20th: Starting mild with rain or t-storms on Sunday. Showers on Monday and Thursday. Much cooler for the rest of the work/school week. Mild again by the weekend.
November 21st-27th: Mild for the first half of the week. Cool for the rest of the week. Rain chances Tuesday, Wednesday and Thanksgiving.