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ICKY, STICKY, AND STORMY...

The long advertised transition to a warm, steamy, and potentially stormy weather pattern is evolving about as expected. The first wave of energy moved east during the day Monday triggered by a mesoscale convective vortex. Heavy rains over an inch were noted in spots. Doppler estimates from the Iowa Flood Center showed the heavier amounts through 4:00pm near I-80. Manlius, Illinois in Bureau County picked up 4 inches and Princeton measured 3. In Iowa, up to 2 inches fell in the northern parts of the Quad City metro, (most notably Eldridge) and 2 inches was indicated just SE of Iowa City.

In the regional perspective you can see the sharp southern cut-off to the rain. That's where a strong warm front was situated over southern Iowa and central Illinois. South of the front, the atmosphere is capped by warm air aloft thwarting thunderstorm development. The position of this boundary will be essential in determining temperature trends and where storm clusters form the next few days.

Additionally, the hi-res goes satellite image clearly shows the warm front at mid-day Monday. South of it, hot sultry conditions prevail with sunshine. To the north, it's much cooler with debris clouds from morning convection.

Positioned on the edge of the strong heat dome, my region now resides in or near the "Ring of Fire", an area we will remain in through at least Thursday. That ensures daily chances of showers and thunderstorms. With available water vapor projected to reach more than 2.5 inches in spots, the atmosphere will be loaded with moisture which you will readily feel..

Any thunderstorm that fire in such an atmosphere could easily produce torrential rains of 1-2 inches an hour. With back-building potential, repeated storms within an MCS cluster could lay down more than that. The potential for localized flash flooding does exist, especially where heavy rains have already occurred. Unfortunately our models have limited ability to specifically define the locations under the gun due to mesocale effects such as outflow boundaries and differential heating. These are highly driven by short term impacts from convection that has yet to develop and thus pattern recognition and short term radar trends will become big players. We'll need to take it day by day.


As you can see, the Weather Prediction Center does have a slight risk of excessive rains in its outlook all the way through Wednesday, July 6th.

The Weather Prediction Center shows this for total precipitation through Thursday.

The National Blend of Models indicates this for the same period.