HIT AND RUN BY JACK FROST...

Jack Frost finally paid a hit and run visit to my house Monday morning. I awoke to a temperature of 33 degrees here in Cedar Rapids and a canopy of white covering the roofs and grassy areas. The last time the temperature was colder here was April 7 (more than 6 months ago) when we plunged to 26 degrees.

Here's a few lows from some major cities in my local area. Up north, Rhinelander and Land O Lakes, Wisconsin both dipped to 27. Fire up the sleds!

You can see the cold was extensive with much of the Midwest in the range of 30-40 degrees at 7:00am. The U.S. average temperature at that time was 43. The coldest being 10 and the warmest 81.

Here's the 24 hour temperature change at 7pm Monday night. You can see how warmer air has invaded the western 2/3rds of the nation.

Now that the warmth has returned its going to be around the remainder of the week. Just look at this 500mb flow Friday evening. An amplified west coast trough and a Great Lakes ridge. That spells NICE!

Here's the 5 day CFSv2 temperature departure

With all the rain that has fallen the past 2-3 weeks soils have turned substantially wetter. Record rains fell in Illinois over the weekend with spots near Aurora picking up 9" (Burr Ridge the most at 9.30")

In some areas the wet weather is hindering the harvest. Here's a larger vantage point of some of the weekend rain totals.

With the developing pattern, high pressure will dominate much of the nation through Saturday resulting in a nice period of drying. You can see in the sea level pressure anomalies the majority of lower surface pressures are centered on Canada.

What that means is moisture is going to be tough to come by. Most PWAT values are generally between 1/4 to 1/5" across the Midwest. Levels are remarkably low in Arkansas less than 2/10ths of an inch. The Gulf of Mexico, our moisture source is completely shut down until further notice.

With high pressure in control and minimal moisture no rain is expected anywhere in the Midwest through Friday. Here's the GFS rainfall forecast ending Friday evening.

The next potential rain maker arrives Saturday night. The GFS has a cold front entering eastern Iowa and the central Midwest at that time.

By then there should be enough moisture to kick up some rain. The GFS has this for amounts.

Until then its a go for beautiful fall weather. Enjoy the show and roll weather...TS