THE RAINS CAME, AND WENT....

You may recall the dryness of late summer and early fall around the central Midwest. For a time we had an 8" rain deficit going in Cedar Rapids from May through September. Here's what the drought monitor looked like September 19th. Moderate to exceptional drought covered much of eastern Iowa. Abnormally dry conditions covered the rest of the Central Midwest.

In late September and October the rains returned and many areas had 3-6" of welcome precipitation. Now look look at the latest conditions.

It's much better but you can still see the SE quadrant of Iowa is covered in abnormally dry to moderate drought conditions. The past 2-3 weeks certainly haven't helped with much of the central Midwest experiencing totals of 2/10" or less.

Here's a larger perspective showing the Upper Midwest and Ohio Valley getting substantially more.

You can clearly see two different storms tracks. One cutting to the north and the other off to the east leaving the majority of my area unscathed.

Here's the rainfall departures the past 2 weeks. Worst where the rain was needed the most.

Going forward the pattern does not look ripe for significant Midwest storms the next 2 weeks. Here's the 500mb jet stream flow November 19th. In general a zonal or northwest flow is expected to prevail. That means a very limited supply of moisture and a storm track near the Canadian border. A super boring pattern!

The GFS shows this for 10 day precipitation.

The 14 day (2 week) totals ending November 21 are not much better.

2 week snowfall is confined to the upper Midwest on the GFS.

Short term the next chance of any precipitation does not arrive until late Saturday or Saturday night. This looks like a low end event but there is a chance that light rain could mix with some snow especially near and north of HWY 20. The EURO says yes, the GFS "no" on the snow. More on this conflict in coming posts.

All I can say is I'm glad this dry looking set-up is happening now. If this was in the middle of winter we would have missed out on at least a month of potential snowstorms. Hopefully we'll get this trend turned around in the next 2 weeks. Steady as she goes for now. Roll weather...TS