It looks like an early summer heat wave is going to cook the southern part of Missouri and its surroundings under a lid of high pressure for several days.

That’s the assessment of Andy Boxell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Springfield.

This week’s forecast calls for temperatures to hover around 100 degrees or higher Wednesday through Friday and perhaps continuing through next week. The mercury climbed to 101 on Monday in Joplin.

That calls for precautions for people and animals alike.

Chad Angell, the Joplin team leader for AmeriCorps, said volunteers working in Joplin’s tornado recovery zone are monitored in the heat.

“We do a safety briefing in the morning, and we make sure they stay hydrated,” he said. “We tell them to take breaks, take longer breaks” than on cooler days and to seek cool spots for lunch. “We tell them to go to local restaurants and grocery stores where they have air conditioning and cool off. We have site supervisors and runners making sure everyone is all right,” along with vehicles at each site to take the workers to local places to cool off.

It could be the second summer in a row that area residents and visiting volunteers deal with oppressive heat. Joplin’s summer last year set a record high temperature of 110, with six days in August reaching 108 to 110.



WEATHER OUTLOOK

Boxell said he can’t predict what the entire season this year will bring, but the current hot weather is coming from a high pressure system that has clamped down over southern Missouri, Northwest Arkansas, and the corners of Southeast Kansas and Northeast Oklahoma.

“We have a very expansive range of high pressure centered over the central part of the country that extends across the expanse of the U.S. from Mexico to Canada,” he said. “Underneath it is a layer of very warm, dry air” that is boxed in, like a skillet with a lid.

In some areas, the ground already is extremely dry because of the heat, Boxell said. “All of that combines to create a period of very warm temperatures,” he said.

There is a chance for a break during the weekend, when a weak frontal ridge may produce some rain or cooler weather, but Boxell predicted that will largely happen east of Springfield, denying relief in the Joplin area.

“For the next two weeks, we’re still looking at a very warm pattern,” he said, with nothing to indicate what the remainder of the summer may bring.



DROUGHT SIGNS

That’s a cycle that Boxell said does not produce the conditions needed for rain. Once the hot days with no rain use up the moisture that evaporates from the ground, arid conditions are created.

“That keeps the lid on thunderstorms, even when it is quite warm and even a little bit humid,” Boxell said.

Warm conditions this year have sped up plant production from the blooming of flowers to the ripening of crops. But an excessive period of heat and drought, particularly on the heels of last year, has the state’s agricultural producers on guard.

Gov. Jay Nixon on Monday asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency to determine whether this year’s early heat and drought in some areas are affecting crops and livestock.



SOUTH HIT HARDER

Brian Blount, executive director of the Farm Service Agency for Lawrence and Barry counties, said the southern part of the state near the Arkansas border is the hardest hit in the state.

“I think Cassville and Barry County is drier than Lawrence County, and Greene County is just as dry as Barry or more,” he said

“We’re starting to see it,” he said of the effects of drought.

Eldon Cole, regional livestock specialist with the University of Missouri Extension Service in Mount Vernon, said some cattle producers are feeding hay already because of the drought’s effect on pastures.

The effects depend on location, he said.

“In Lawrence County, north of Interstate 44, things don’t look too bad,” he said. “But you go south of the interstate and into the (Arkansas) borderline counties, and they are pretty sad. It looks like it did here last summer in late July” after weeks of high temperatures.

North of the I-44, “We have people who reported they have already got in more hay than all of last year,” Cole said. “If you go into those southern counties, those counties have about a third of the hay they had last year.”

“Right now, they’re worrying a lot in the dry area,” because they know the traditional hot season of July and August is ahead. “This weather forecast bears testament that we’re a long way from the fall rainy season.”

Jake Charleston of Triple C Cattle Co. at Reeds said the operation there has plenty of hay available. “We’re in pretty decent shape at this point,” he said. “Right now, things are about normal.”

Nixon on Monday encouraged hay sellers to list themselves on a state directory for hay sales that can be found on the state website at www.mo.gov.

Cole said some farmers already have been buying hay if they fear they will run short. Some also have been selling a few cows to reduce feeding. The cattle market is still solid, but that means cows will be more expensive when ranchers want to increase their herds again, he said.





Farm facts



MISSOURI RANKS second in the nation, after Texas, for cattle farming, and Oklahoma is third. More than half of Missouri’s 108,000 farms produce cattle. Counties in the southwest, south and central sections of Missouri produce the most cattle. Lawrence County is ranked No. 1 among the 114 counties in the state for cattle operations; Barry County is No. 3; and Newton County is No. 8.

Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service





Forecast



JOPLIN’S FORECAST high temperatures this week: today, 97; Wednesday, 99; Thursday, 100; and Friday, 100. In Northeast Oklahoma and northern Arkansas, highs are forecast to be 100 to 104 degrees, with a heat index of 105 to 110.

Source: National Weather Service





Heat-related deaths



LAST YEAR, 47 people in Missouri died of heat-related illness. There were 17 deaths in 2010. The high was 92 deaths in 1999. Since 1980, 996 deaths have been attributed to heat.

Source: Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services