Large chain pharmacies start offering COVID-19 vaccines.

BARTON COUNTY, Mo. – Thousands of additional doses of Coronavirus vaccines are coming to residents in Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas.

Walmart and Sam’s Club pharmacies have contracted with the federal government to provide vaccines in all three states. 81 Walmart and Sam’s Club pharmacy locations in the state will be offering them, starting February 12th, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

Walmart says that residents will need to have appointments, which can be made on the Walmart and Sam’s Club websites.

There are seven locations in our local viewing area in Missouri — in Carthage, Webb City, four locations in Joplin and in Lamar.

For the Barton County Health Department, the additional vaccinator will mean a welcome reprieve after several stressful months.

“We’re excited about that. We’ve said from the very beginning that it’s gonna take a community wide effort to get anything done,” says Barton County Health Department Administrator Joel Dermott.

For almost a year now the health department’s small staff has handled contact tracing, fielding calls and questions from residents and they recently started administering vaccines.

The health department received its first shipment of 200 doses last week — and used the last of it on the 12th.

“I tell everybody it’s kind of a grind in a way because it’s just unrelenting. And it has been. And I mean, we’ve basically been at this for a year.,” says Dermott. “I don’t want to sound like a victim because we’re not. That’s our job. And we understand that, and we’re trying our very best to do that. It comes with the territory, and I think we’ve done as good as we can.”

According to DHSS, the doses that go to Walmart will come directly from the federal supply instead of taking away from the state’s normal allocation. So providers like the Barton County Health Department will keep getting doses from the state.

“We’ve worked with our local hospital very well and they’re a partner of ours in so many things. The pharmacies do a great job locally here as well. To see Walmart involved in the game… I mean, they bring their own resources to it that others don’t have. That helps everyone. So we’re excited about it,” adds Dermott.

DHSS says as more vaccines come down the pipeline, more pharmacy locations across the state will receive doses.

Friday AM Blog: Latest on the winter weather! -Doug

Good Friday morning everyone!  I hope your week has been great!  I worked on Sunday. I am still a little miffed by the Super Bowl.  Monday through Wednesday I was in KC with my boy for chemo and got back yesterday.  So I haven’t been able to do a blog for a little while.  First off, that was one intense drive to KC early Monday morning.  We actually ended up in a ditch between Lamar and Nevada.  I was able to stick it in 4 wheel drive and get right back on the road.  Christian’s eyes got so wide as we did a 360 and down.  I just said “here we go!”.  We were perfectly fine but those were some slick roads.  We have had the arctic air all week and it isn’t going anywhere until about next Friday or Saturday.  In fact, it gets even colder.  We will have the low wind chills this morning and through the day.  I do think with a little sun we could push 20 degrees by the afternoon.  There is a weak wave passing by tonight.  This will produce some light snow and flurries across the area.  I don’t really expect accumulations at this point.  If so, maybe a dusting.

Mostly cloudy skies on Saturday with highs only in the upper 10s.  Our next system moves in on Sunday.  First lets look back.  In the Heady Pattern, we are on a 46 day cycle this year.  So we have seen this system several times before.  Lets go back to the last time it hit.  Do you remember right before New Years?  We had the 1/2″ of freezing rain, then an inch of snow on top of it the next day.  Well it is back, but this time all snow.  We had ice on the 30th, snow the 31st and then again on the 2nd of January.  All three of those waves are about to return.  Lets look at December 31st.

This is the upper level chart from that day.  You see the low in Minn., the SW US and the Pacific NW.  Here is this coming Sunday.

It is pretty much an exact match!  So we will definitely get wintry weather from this.  The question is how much? Last time we got 1/2″ of ice, which is about 5″ of snow and then one inch of snow on top of that.  So that means this storm has the potential to produce 6″ of snow.  Lets dig into it.  Light snow increases by Sunday morning.

Light snow continues through the day.  Lets go to Sunday evening.

The snow will be light on Sunday, but I think it could give us in that 2-4″ range during the day.  Now, a lot can change.  The closer we get to the event the closer I can get on these numbers.  Light snow continues Sunday night and Monday morning.  The Monday morning wave will mainly stay south of us but we will be right on the northern edge.

I think the second wave on Sunday night Monday morning also have the potential to drop about 2-4″ of snow.  So for a total, I am thinking in the 3-7″ range.  But a lot can change.  The temperatures are going to be very cold.  During this event we most likely won’t get above 10 degrees.  That means the snow to liquid ratio is going to be very high.  Most likely 15:1 or even 20:1.  That means for one inch of rain, we would get 15-20″ of snow.  Well we know that last time it came through, we got 1/2″ of liquid, which at this ratio would be at least 7″ of snow.  So when I am saying we are in the 3-7″range as of now, we have the potential to go HIGHER.  I am going to keep it conservative for now, but those numbers may go up.  With the extreme cold, the snow will stick to everything and cause major issues on the roads for several days.  On top of that, we should get at least light accumulations once again on Wednesday and Thursday.  So a ton to watch but I will keep you update.  Long range forecast is below.

-Doug

Next Friday and Saturday:  Temperatures finally starting to warm up a bit.

February 21st-27th: We’re looking at cool temperatures for the first part of the week. We’ll turn briefly colder for Thursday before we turn cool for Friday and mild for Saturday. Rain chances will be around on Sunday before another system sneaks in by the middle of the week. That will give us slight snow chances Tuesday, slight rain and snow chances Wednesday and slight snow chances for Thursday.

February 28th-March 6th: Sunday looks mild before we turn cooler on Monday and cold for Tuesday and Wednesday. A brief mild spell for Thursday and Friday before we cool back down on Saturday. A system early in the week will have rain chances for Sunday and Monday. We’ll watch for slight rain and snow chances on Wednesday and slight rain chances on Friday.

March 7th-13th:  A cool start to the week with some showers on Sunday and Monday.  Warming up the second half of the week with rain on Thursday and Friday.

March 14th-20th:  Rain or snow chances on Sunday.  Cool on Sunday and Monday with mild temperatures the rest of the week.  Rain chances back in on Wednesday.