SWEET AS THE CORN...

The past few days have been special ones weatherwise thanks to an expansive high pressure that's dominating the eastern half of the nation. Here's the upper level pattern bringing the pleasant change.

The sea level pressure anomaly chart shows a massive surface high sprawled all the way from Mexico to Canada.

The northerly winds east of the high have cut off the deep moisture that brought extreme humidity and dew points last week. Notice the absence of rain anywhere east of the Rockies.

It makes sense when you look at the water vapor anomalies which are less than half of what is normal.

Here the observed rainfall amounts over the past 2 days. Pretty meager.

The satellite provides another example of the limited weather associated with the dry air mass.

After a wet spring and early summer some parts of Iowa and the central Midwest have fallen on dry times and could use some rain. These are the July rainfall departures around the state of Iowa. Some pockets of heavy rain have kept it wet in the NW third but much of the south and east are 1 to nearly 3" below normal on rain.