The latest local news, weather and high school sports from the Heartland

KIRKSVILLE, MO -- With the hot and dry weather the heartland has been experiencing lately, many of you wanted to know more about what exactly is causing these conditions for Wednesday’s Facebook Story of the day.

Summer only officially began about a week ago but much of the Heartland has been experiencing conditions more normal of late July and August.

High temperatures and lack of rain continue to threaten crops, pastures, and many people’s lawns leaving people wondering if there is any relief on the horizon. 

“We’re obviously seeing stress due to lack of water. Root systems in the corn are not developing properly, the soybean emergence is uneven, that’s always a sign of water stress and so the impacts are already being seen,” said Missouri University Climatologist Pat Guinan.

After a fairly cool wet March and April, May started a weather trend that has continued into June setting records along the way. The reason behind this is what meteorologist like to call an Omega Block.

This is when the overall upper pattern takes the shape of the Greek omega character. You can see as we take a look at the weather pattern how the jet stream flow starts in the west and continues heading up to the north and eventually heads back down over the east coast. Areas under this ridge typically experience very clear, hot and dry conditions for prolonged periods of time.

“It’s imperative that we see a significant pattern change impacting the central part of the country or these impacts are only going to get worse,” Guinan said.

When patterns like this develop, it takes a significant weather pattern shift to bring long term relief. That often comes with changing seasons or the remnants of a tropical system working up our way. 

This is bad news as we have seen flash drought conditions develop across most of the Midwest over the last two months. And with no immediate relief in the forecast, conditions are likely to continue getting worse.

And with summer just beginning, our current heat wave is likely to be the first of many to come.