Climatologist Pat Guinan (guh-NAN) says it’s been a summer of extremes. Typically, he says, north Missouri receives as much as three inches of rainfall in July and August. But it has received almost none while southern parts of the state have gotten three to six inches of rain and in some places as much as twenty inches. He calls it “incredible precipitation disparity”
“It’s incredible to think that in a two-hour drive to the north from southern Missouri to northern Missouri we go from extreme wetness, historic flooding, to a drought across northern Missouri,” he says.
The reason for all of this is the kind of stuff television weather people like to show you on a map and wave their arms about when they explain it. But basically, Missouri has been the meat in a weather sandwich. We’;ve been caught between a low-pressure area in northwestern Canada at the same time there has been a strong ridge of high pressure across the southwest. Our interview with Guinan, posted below, contains much richer detail.
He says crops in north Missouri’s prime growing areas are showing stress from the drought, with high temperatures moving in. And Guinan says there is no immediate rain relief in sight. The National Climate Prediction Center forecasts some rain later in September but Guinan says that might be too late to do much good.
