SWEET RAIN, ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN NOTHING...
It took some serious doing but after 18 days, (and only one day with rain during the whole month of September in the Quad Cities), rain finally fell around the entire area Monday. While some places had some nice totals, other's not so much. However, anything is better than nothing and hopefully you were one of those that got in on a soaker. My western counties were even placed under a thunderstorm watch but little if any severe weather was noted in my area. Here's the Doppler estimates of rain as of 2:00 AM Tuesday. The green's represent 1/2 inch and yellow is the 2.00 inch threshold. Once again my central counties roughly north of I-80 which needed the rain the most picked up the least.
Despite ample moisture, one of the reasons rainfall was not even heavier was the speed of the cold front. Racing along, its already departing the Midwest leaving brisk NW winds and much cooler temperatures in its wake. Tuesday afternoon temperatures will be about 20 degrees cooler than what we experienced Monday. That translates to readings in the upper 60s to low 70s at best. See the projected 24 hour changes below.
That change was already seen Monday afternoon in western Iowa. Temperatures there behind the cold front were only in the low 60s compared to the mid 80s in much of my area further east. The cool down is coming baby.
Notice the change in the 500mb jet stream flow and the associated temperature departures from this past Sunday when we were in the low 90s, to Wednesday morning when we'll be in the upper 40s to low 50s.
Sunday 500mb jet.
Sunday temperature departures
Wednesday 500mb jet
Wednesday temperature departures.
Looking ahead, a reinforcing shot of cool air arrives just in time for the weekend bringing temperatures down again after a modest late week warm-up.
Here's the 500mb jet Friday, a vigorous trough is digging into the Great Lakes.
That produces temperature departures that look like this Saturday and Sunday.
Putting it all together, the EURO 10 day meteogram spits out temperatures that look like this in Cedar Rapids. These readings are accurate representations of what the rest of my area will see. Fall will be in the air!
The GFS has the same idea but is not quite as cool in comparison. At this time I prefer the cooler solution of the EURO.
As for precipitation, outside of a few spotty showers Friday the next 10 days will see little if any rain. In fact, I suspect we've seen about all the rain that's worth a mention the rest of the September. On that note, I'll call it a day. Roll weather...TS
