Kansas City weather: There’s some good news and bad news for those Memorial Day plans
Precipitation may hold off for much of the Memorial Day morning, but forecasters expect rain to blanket the region later in the day.
The National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill expects temperatures to stay in the 60s through Monday. That’s well below average temperatures for this time of year, when highs are generally in the 80s. Forecasters predict a quarter to a half an inch of rain to fall in the later part of the day Monday.
“There will be increasing chances from morning hours to afternoon hours,” said Chris Bowman, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to be all that intense, but I think people will be dodging some light rain showers by the afternoon hours.”
While rain is expected, thunder is unlikely, according to the forecast.
“So if getting a little wet doesn’t bother you then maybe your Memorial Day activities can still go on,” says the weather service’s online forecast discussion.
Small rain chances will remain in the forecast throughout the first week of June.
While it seems like an extraordinarily wet spring in Kansas City, Bowman said the precipitation accumulation has actually been close to normal. Through Saturday, the weather service recorded monthly rainfall of 5.14 inches at Kansas City International Airport, only slightly above the 4.97 normal rainfall measurements there.
Bowman said almost half the month’s accumulation was recorded on two single days: May 16 and May 27.
“One of the unusual things is that we’ve had such a long streak of rainfall so it seems like it’s perpetually wet, but where the rain really added up was only on a couple days,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s been cloudy and wet.”
