Area Forecast Discussions are the real forecasts, written 3 to 4 times daily by NWS meteorologists reading the models and interpreting what they mean for your area. They offer far deeper insight than any weather app, but they're written in dense meteorological shorthand. Plaincast uses Anthropic's Claude to summarize them into plain English, side by side with the annotated original.
Plaincast decodes the National Weather Service's Area Forecast Discussion — the real forecast, written 3 to 4 times a day by the meteorologist on shift — into plain English. The discussion is where a forecaster explains their reasoning: which models disagree, what they are watching, and how confident they are. Below is the current edition for Kansas City, with its shorthand expanded. The full experience — an AI plain-English summary beside the annotated original — loads with JavaScript, and every one of the 68 forecast offices has its own edition.
Isolated sprinkles possible along the MO/KS state line this afternoon- early evening.
Showers with a few embedded lightning strikes expected tonight mainly west of a line from Lamoni- Moberly MO. Rainfall amounts are expected to be light totaling less than 0.25".
Temperatures warm to mid week ahead of a cold front moving through the region.
Breezy southerly winds expected next weekend, with the potential of showers and thunderstorms.
Isentropic lift on the 305-310K surfaces is leading to weak shower activity building into the area from Nebraska and eastern KS. Very dry air in the subcloud layer (nearly 10K feet) is going to limit what reaches the ground, but could see a few sprinkles along the Missouri/KS state late through the afternoon into the early evening hours.
Towards midnight, low level warm air/moisture advection leads to weak instability and could see spotty scattered showers develop. Instability remains quite weak with moist adiabatic lapse rates aloft, but still should be able to support weak showers with an embedded lightning strike here and there. 06Z the regional model NEST hinted at the potential for heavy rainfall with this activity overnight, but successive model runs have contained precipitable water values to ~1.5" (which is near normal for this time of year). Expect accumulating precipitation to largely be west of a line from Lamoni Iowa to Moberly MO with surface high to the east limiting eastward extent of the precipitation shield.
Low level warm air advection weakens after 12Z Monday and expect shower activity to weaken and shift southeast with time as short wave builds east. Partial clearing should allow for a decent temperature recovery on Monday, and even warmer conditions Tuesday into Wednesday as upper ridge across the west expands east.
Ridge riding shortwave is expected to build into the Upper Midwest Wednesday, with trailing cold front moving through the region Wednesday morning. Could see a few showers and storms with the frontal passage, but timing may limit coverage.
Surface ridge moves through the region on Thursday with stronger return flow Friday into next weekend. With the gulf wide open, ample moisture in place for showers and thunderstorms.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Kansas City discussion at /o/EAX/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.