IT CAME WITH A BANG...

The ingredients all came together for some active thunderstorms and locally heavy rain Tuesday afternoon and evening. We needed the rain, but not the storms. An 81 mph wind gust was reported at Burlington. That's a banger! One of the key ingredients in the evolution of the event was moisture ahead of the 500mb trough, shown below.

Ahead of the forcing, pooled precipital water vapor (PWAT's) reached over 2.00 inches up and down the spine of the Mississippi. That allowed dew points to climb into the low 70s. Easily the most muggy day of the year!

Highs along and south of I-80 managed to crack 80. The heating combined with the deep moisture generated significant instability in southeast Iowa, where CAPE reached 3200 j/kg around Ft. Madison. Robust!

That was all the ammunition necessary for explosive development of thunderstorms from Iowa back into Oklahoma and Texas.

A few of the storms reached tops of 45,000 feet, nearly 9 miles straight up. The infra-red satellite shows some of the coldest cloud tops around that level near the Quad Cities.

The radar below shows a QLCS (quasi linear convective system). This refers to a squall line, which is a line of thunderstorms that are oriented linearly or nearly linearly. A QLCSs can produce severe weather like damaging winds, large hail, dangerous lightning, heavy rain, and even tornadoes. These storms can travel at high speeds, sometimes reaching 45 to 60 mph, due to the strong winds within them driving them forward. They are particularly known for producing spin-up tornadoes, which are brief tornadoes that can form in areas of rotation within the squall line, especially along bowing segments. These tornadoes can be hard to spot because they are often "rain-wrapped," meaning they are obscured by heavy rain.  The QLCS is very evident below, traversing the highly moist, unstable air mass in place. You can see two tornado warnings in place, one involving the Quad City metro area.

From Texas to Iowa and Illinois, 189 reports of severe weather have been logged by the Storm Prediction Center through midnight Tuesday. Most were for strong, damaging winds. Up to 19,000 Mid-American customers lost power around the Quad Cities, especially hard hit was Milan and Moline.

This was a wet system for much of the Midwest. These are Doppler rain estimates through late Tuesday evening. A narrow band of up to 2 inches fell just NW of the Quad Cities.

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COOLER AND CALMER...

The trough will continue moving eastward Wednesday, taking any lingering showers out of my Illinois counties early in the morning. Eventually, clouds should begin to break, with at least partial clearing from west to east in the afternoon. With NW flow returning aloft, wildfire smoke is expected to return for several days. The HRRR integrated smoke product shows a band of it sweeping in around noon Wednesday. Temperatures will cool to the mid 70s and dew points will lower to far more comfortable levels, especially in the NW.

The baroclinic boundary with its forcing and moisture gets forced south through the start of the weekend, which implies that outside of a stray shower or sprinkle Thursday night, dry weather should rule through Saturday. Sunday, another vigorous upstream disturbance digs into the Midwest, bringing with it a chance of showers Sunday. More important, the strength of the system will bring a healthy shot of Canadian air that will keep temperatures cooler than normal for most of the next week. Look at this trough Monday. Not very June-like!

Here's what the EURO shows for temperatures through next Monday.

Longer term, here's hoping the rains were generous in your area Tuesday. The pattern going forward does not look conducive to anything more than scattered light rains the next 2 weeks. The GFS shows this for rainfall departures through June 19th.

After all the action of Tuesday, a cooler, calmer and drier brand of weather will be with us the remainder of the week. Thankfully, the rain man cometh...as expected Tuesday. Roll weather...TS