Thursday's cloudiness precedes heat's return

By James R. Campbell

Nevada Daily Mail

Nevada and Vernon County had their best chance for rain in weeks with the tantalizing day-long Thursday appearance of a raft of darkly tinged clouds, but the development was short-lived and may not rematerialize for some time, said a National Weather Service forecaster in Springfield.

Enabled by the transitory weakening of an oppressive ridge of high pressure, a Canadian cool front sidled into Southwest Missouri before daylight Thursday, stirring up isolated thunderstorms that peppered rainfall totaling an inch to 1.5 inches around Branson, West Plains and Houston, Mo.

Joplin caught a trace of rain after enduring a record high reading of 104 degrees Wednesday, but Nevada's only noticeable benefits were some cloud-provided shade and a cooling-off to 95 degrees in the wake of a series of daytime highs in the high 90s to the 100-degree range.

"We have a weak frontal boundary in the area," NWS meteorologist Mike Griffin said in a telephone interview. "Because of the clouds and rain around, we have our best shot at some decent rainfall for awhile. If you don't see rain today, you're probably out of luck."

Griffin said hot, dry and sunny conditions, to understate the issue, will return today and continue through this weekend and early next week. Daytime highs will be around 100 and the nights "comfortable" at or near 70, he said.

"High pressure will build back after the cool front washes out shortly after this evening," said Griffin. "However, we will see a shift this fall and winter. We're having La Nina now, which occurs when the Pacific Ocean is cooler, but El Nino is coming back.

"The weather buoys around the Equator are reporting that the sea temperatures are swinging global weather patterns back in the other direction."

Griffin said the cooler mid-week temperatures and widely scattered rainfall came as something of a surprise. "The high pressure ridge that had been over us for a couple of weeks finally broke down and allowed the front to come in," he said.

"This is the coolest day we've seen almost all summer with temps in the 80s and low 90s. This stubborn ridge of high pressure ridge over the central U.S. had been blocking any storm systems from coming down to the Ozarks in Missouri since June."

The forecaster said the cluster of storms that rained four to six inches in three hours June 21 in eastern Vernon and St. Clair counties, giving Walker and Schell City some of the best corn and soybeans in Missouri, was an anomaly somewhat like the quick-hitting Thursday storms southeast of here. "Certain areas got some good rain," he said.

"It would have been nice if the thunderstorms had lined up as a front, but that didn't happen. We didn't get anything in Springfield. The pattern that has set up this summer will be here for awhile."