Extremely cold conditions, bouts of snow to descend upon Kansas City for the weekend
The worst weather conditions of this winter so far will descend upon Kansas City this weekend, with wind chills falling to -20 degrees overnight and bouts of snow likely, according to FOX4 meteorologist Karli Ritter.
“It is cold this morning, bitterly cold in fact and we have wind chill advisories that are going to be in effect until noon today,” said Ritter, who provide weather updates to The Star.
Shortly before 7 a.m. the temperature fell to 1 degree at Kansas City International Airport. When you factored in a 13 mph wind, the wind chill value was -17 degrees.
Because of the extreme cold, several schools in the Kansas City area were canceling in-person classes and turning to virtual learning or canceling all classes.
Those turning to virtual learning included Sherwood Schools, Ray-Pec Schools, Lee’s Summit Schools, Blue Springs Schools and Shawnee Mission Schools.
“We’ll get a little bit of a reprieve and then we’ll have a new advisory go into effect at 9 o’clock tonight through noon tomorrow,” Ritter said. “So this is going to be a prolonged stretch of some really, really cold conditions.”
The high on Thursday is expected to climb to only 8 degrees, but it will feel like it’s below zero for most of the day.
“In fact, even this afternoon, we’ll still have wind chills running 5 to 10 degrees below zero — that’s what it will likely feel like outside,” Ritter said. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll wake up to wind chills and a similar threshold of 15 to 20 degrees below zero.”
Sub-zero wind chills will be a common theme throughout the weekend. However, the coldest conditions will come Sunday night into Monday morning.
There will be a couple chances for snow this weekend. There could be a brief batch of snow late Friday into early Saturday, but the better chances remain north of the Kansas City area. The metro will likely only see a dusting of snow.
“Sunday and Monday there’s going to be a storm system moving through the central part of the country,” Ritter said. “The best chances for heavier snow will be off to our south and west on Sunday and then south and east Monday as it rotates just barely around our viewing area.”
The National Weather Service in Kansas City said that 1 to 2 inches of snow is in the forecast for the metro area, while 2 to 3 inches of snow is possible in an area stretching from Truman Lake to the Lake of the Ozarks.
“Bottom line: It is going to remain cold, snowy at times and then maybe just maybe we’ll start warming up towards the end of next week,” Ritter said.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREHow we did this story
The Star produced this weather update in partnership with the local FOX4 television station. The station’s meteorologists create forecast videos multiple times a day for the newspaper to include in its weather reports.
This story was originally published February 12, 2021 at 8:13 AM.
