August 28th, 2026 - Elevated Fire Weather Conditions across Southern and Western Missouri.

August 28th, 2026 - Elevated Fire Weather Conditions across Southern and Western Missouri. With continued hot to even very hot temperatures and a lack of moisture recovery overnight, Missouri is once again facing an elevated fire weather risk today. For much of the area of concern today, overnight temperatures didn't drop below the mid 60's, and are already pushing into the mid to upper 80's around 1030. Current surface observations around 1030 indicate that while eastern Missouri has higher moisture this morning, locations in southern and western Missouri, especially down in extreme SW Missouri, humidity values have already fallen below 50% and likely will continue through midday and into the afternoon and evening hours, before starting to recover, likely around the 2000 timeframe. While most RAWS stations recovered 5-7 points of moisture overnight, those returns are quickly falling, as the Mt.Vernon RAWS station is already indicating 9.6% moisture at 1000, falling rapidly from the observation at 0800 of 12.5%. Fire weather conditons could reach elevated natuire across much of western and southern Missouri, however, with the winds changing directions, to be blowing in from the south as a high pressure center pushes over towards the the United State's southern region, but winds are expected to remain fairly light for the most part, with sustained winds in the 5-10 mph range, and gusting up to 15 mph at times.