CONTINUING TO WATCH WEEKEND RAIN CHANCES

Like a broken record, the dry pattern persists for much of the region, however we have had a few scattered thunderstorms in the region - notably across central Iowa. In fact, a few flash flood warnings were issued where the heaviest rain and strong storms were located. Waterloo, Iowa saw some quarter-sized hail! Looking ahead, the heaviest rain will remain to the west of the area through the weekend, but we are still watching some potential rain and thunderstorm activity pushing in Friday through Saturday.

Wednesday and Wednesday evening we will be watching for another chance of showers and storms, especially across central and western Iowa. A few storms could be strong especially west of I-35 in the late afternoon and early evening.

GFS

Euro

Stepping towards the weekend, notice the European is not quite as far east with the rain through Saturday evening as the GFS is. Western and central Iowa have a higher chance of a good drink of water, but eastern Iowa and along/east of the Mississippi River have lower confidence. Again, "When in drought, have some doubt" when it comes to rain chances.

I do think there will be rain in the area, but the timing and amounts for areas farther east into the Quad Cities region are pretty low confidence at this point in time. Hopefully as the higher-resolution models get in range we will get a better picture. For now, looks like light showers Friday with a few storms possible Friday night. More scattered showers will be possible Saturday.

Through early next week the American Ensemble, the GEFS, continues to indicate above-normal precipitation for portions of the region, especially just west of the Quad Cities. I would love to see trends take this farther east but the trend has not been our friend as of late.

Analogs are more favorable with the above-normal precipitation potential more across the Great Lakes region into early next week. This will be fueled by rather robust southwesterly flow of moisture and warm temperatures. The added instability could throw in some thunderstorm potential which could increase some rain chances.

Once we get passed the weekend there is another storm system floating around early next week. This would look like Monday of next week. I would say, like the weekend storm system, confidence is less than ideal, however there continues to be a signal which the analogs above were indicating as well.

In the 10-14 day timeframe, the pattern looks quite warm and amplified. This would continue to favor above-to-well-above-normal temperatures across the central US, and would certainly support more active weather as well towards the beginning of October. We'll go more in detail on that in the days ahead, we'll get through the next few days of action first.

-Meteorologist Nick Stewart