THE FUTURE HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE SOGGY...
The weather improved around the central Midwest Tuesday but as expected there were still a few scattered instability showers and storms. These were most common in the north during the late afternoon and early evening. Doppler shows a few spots may have picked up a 1/4" of rain but in general amounts were 1/10" or less. Lots of places missed the showers altogether.
You can see that between the showers and the clouds that produced them, there were pockets of sunshine. Despite the strongest and most direct solar radiation of the year readings remained well below normal in the 70s
Up in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin 3:00 pm readings were in the 60s with mid to upper 50s in northern Michigan. That is a dang cool day for late June.
You can see the deep 500mb trough that's bringing the cooler weather. It remains firmly intact today bringing another chance of scattered afternoon showers and storms. Coverage should be no more than 30-40 percent of the area focused on the north. Highs will again stay cool in the 70s.
This is the system that brought up to 7 inches of rain Sunday and Monday near and just west of Waterloo, Iowa. Combined with the remnants of tropical storm Christobal and what's fallen in other systems the past 30 days, rain totals are in the 8-11 inch range over most of northeast Iowa.
For the 30 day period, the departures in northeast Iowa are 4-6 inches above normal. Ironically west of I-35 and east of the Mississippi, significant deficits exist.
With just over half a year to go, Waterloo is on pace to have its wettest year on record reporting 20.09" of precipitation. In the graph below, you can see where 2020 is in comparison to 2018 which is the all-time wettest with 54.15". If it never rained again the rest of this year, 2020 would end up nearly 3" wetter than 1910 which is the driest year on record with 17.35". By the way average for the entire year is 33.12" in Waterloo.
Below you can see the same comparisons for Cedar Rapids and the Quad Cities. Cedar Rapids is giving 1993, it's wettest year a run. The Quad Cities is no where near its wettest year of 1973.
As you would expect, soil moisture as of June 22nd is ranked in the top wettest 70 to 95 percent over much of eastern Iowa and northern Illinois.
That leads us to the potential for more heavy rains to start the weekend. Warm advection enters the picture again Thursday night with warm moist air ( and dew points near 70) approaching from the SW. Scattered showers and storms look possible as early as late Thursday night but mainly over the far northwest. Friday and Friday night activity should increase for all the area and become more widespread. With water vapor (PWAT's) pooling and locally going over 2.00" that's a strong signal for heavy rain in any decent thunderstorm that forms.
The EURO has this for rain through Friday night.
It looks like we should get a break by early Saturday as the front responsible for the storms sinks southward into Missouri. However, it returns northward later Sunday bring with it a renewed threat for thunderstorms and muggy conditions.
Amounts of an inch or two are certainly possible where the most robust convection fires. If a given spot gets a little training or is visited by multiple cells, amounts could go even higher. The vacillating boundary appears to get hung up over my region early next week so unsettled and potentially stormy weather is likely. We are getting into MCS season and I am concerned some part of my area could be in line for significant rain and perhaps even severe weather next week. We're going to need to watch it closely. I'm out. Roll weather...TS
