By AARON BARNHART
The Kansas City Star
8/20/2003

People are stopping Kansas City's best-paid meteorologists in stores and asking them that burning question: When's this heat wave ever going to end?

"By the end of the week it'll be out of the searing 100s," said Bryan Busby of KMBC, Channel 9. "But we'll still get a lot of heat in August."

But that's not what WDAF's Mike Thompson is telling viewers. Thompson, chief meteorologist at Channel 4, said Tuesday that triple-digit highs will persist through at least the middle of next week.

"A system like this, it's just stuck," said Thompson, referring to the high-pressure front hovering 30,000 feet above Kansas City. Because the front has baked much of the moisture out of the soil, Thompson said, it's harder for clouds to form and bring relief.

KSHB, Channel 41, forecaster Gary Lezak agreed that the severe heat will return next week. But he disagrees with his former Channel 4 colleague and says a front that is approaching Kansas City will result in a slight cool-off this weekend.

"We look at the same data set," said Lezak. "I make up my own mind and Mike makes up his. He thinks it (the cool front) won't make it through here. I think it will."

KCTV, Channel 5, chief meteorologist Katie Horner and Channel 9's Busby are somewhere in the middle.

"I see a little break on Thursday, and then it just gets hot again," said Horner.

Local meteorologists consult the same computer models when making their forecasts. Those models support the Thursday night cool-off scenario.

Busby, Horner and Time Warner Cable's Metro Weather service all predict highs in the mid-90s. Lezak thinks weekend highs will be closer to the low 90s. And the National Weather Service and AccuWeather Inc., which supply weather forecasts to The Kansas City Star, are aiming even lower, with highs in the mid- to upper 80s.

"The computer models are wrong," Thompson said. "I just kind of ignore them."

He said the computers fail to take into account the current system's self-perpetuating heat cycle, which could keep temperatures well above normal for weeks to come.

Bob Larson, a forecaster with AccuWeather, agreed that "heat tends to feed upon itself," as was seen in the devastating Dust Bowl of the 1930s. In the short term, though, he said he'd be "stunned" if Thursday's cool front didn't lower temperatures by several refreshing degrees.

It may just be coincidence, but the two services not based in Kansas City, Metro Weather and AccuWeather, have the most optimistic weekend outlooks, with conditions returning, if only briefly, to near normal.

If there's one thing meteorologists agree on, however, it's that long-range forecasts are as dicey in the summer heat as they are in spring storm season.

"Even as good as the technology is, you get beyond a couple of days and it's something of a crapshoot," said Mark Taylor, who directs affiliate relations for the Massachusetts-based company that furnishes on-screen weather graphics for TV stations across the country, including Metro Weather.

Said Larson: "Weather changes constantly. If it didn't, you wouldn't have any need for a daily forecast. You could just tape it once and play it over and over."