There's a familiar saying in the Midwest when it comes to weather — if you don’t like it, wait five minutes.
Well, crazy Kansas City weather hasn’t let us down this year. Winter saw very little moisture, yet May was the the sixth wettest in Kansas City history and we’re right on track for record levels of precipitation as the summer continues.
“Since June 1st, we’ve had 10.97 inches of rainfall. Normal is about 7.44," KCTV-5 meteorologist Lisa Teachman told Steve Kraske on Up To Date. "We’re more than 3.5 inches above the norm and that’s just for the summer season, and summer for meteorologists last through August."
She would have come to KCUR studios — but Wednesday's unpredictable, stormy weather kept her at her station's weather center.
Though this spring and summer have been wetter than normal, Teachman says that it’s all part of the ebb and flow of living in this region.
The unusual thing about his year is the frequency of storms that have produced hail, flooding and yes, tornadoes.
“It seems like we can't just get a random shower, we can’t get a thunderstorm without it becoming severe,” she said.
Part of that, she explained, could have something to do with the atmosphere. When a storm passes through an area, it disrupts the atmosphere. When you have an unstable atmosphere, the weather is subject to much higher variability. So if another storm system passes through before the atmosphere is stable again, there’s a higher chance it could be severe.
As far as why our region has been so rainy this summer, that has everything to do with the position of the jet stream that drives these storm systems.
Teachman illustrates:
“If you take a look at the whole entire world and imagine that a jump rope extends all around the whole entire globe, depending on how the sun heats different areas of the earth differently, that’s gonna change where that jump rope either shifts to the north or shifts down to the south ... If it swings to the north, then chances are we’re gonna be drier and we’re gonna be hotter, but if that jump rope starts to swing to the south, then we’re gonna be in a more stormy pattern,” she said.
“Unfortunately for us, that jump rope has been pretty much on top of us.”
But as much as Kansas Citians may complain about this summer’s crazy weather, meteorologists like Teachman embrace it.
“Every single day is a challenge, every time I come in ... it’s almost like it’s Christmas morning for me,” she said.
What's her prediction for the rest of the summer?
“I don’t think we’re finished with the rain yet,” she said.
