WATCHING THE NEXT STORM SYSTEM

Talk about a wild week of weather! Across the Iowa, Illinois and Missouri area we had more than 600 severe thunderstorm warnings and nearly 200 tornado warnings. Thankfully as we roll through the weekend and early this week the pattern is taking a bit of a breather, however we are watching yet another stretch of active weather late in the week to round out the month of April.

So far through April there has been 216 Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Warnings issued in the state of Iowa - the second most in a month of April since 1986 only behind 2001. We could add to this number before the month if all said and done as we are once again watching for more active weather.

Analogs are starting to show that severe weather potential once again Thursday through Sunday with probabilities of severe weather increasing to 50-70% locally in this period. Higher probabilities are farther south, for now, but there's quite a bit to watch locally. Guidance seems to indicate Thursday as the main day, with Friday having more limited chances in the Quad Cities area.

The upper air pattern will once again support severe weather as a positively-tilted trough wraps through the Central CONUS Thursday/Friday. This will allow plentiful moisture return across the Plains and Midwest to fuel storms as well as increase vertical wind shear to support organized thunderstorms.

European Ensemble 24-hour precipitation Thursday highlights the storm porential from Wisconsin through Iowa and into Kansas/Oklahoma. It's quite similar in terms of placement of the recent severe weather event Friday but the actual magnitude of severe weather is unknown at this point.

Friday the severe weather threat extends farther east, but at this point the guidance has the highest storm threat east and south of our area. Again this will be a day to watch.

Ahead of the storm risk later in the week we will have a lot of warmth in our area! Temperatures are forecast to push into the 80s Wednesday and Thursday. Later in the period confidence lessens as frontal placement will have a major impact on temperatures.

Looking longer term we keep looking at prospects of above-normal precipitation across the Mississippi River Valley, however there are some subtle signals of a longer-lasting dry period at the end of April and into early May. The European weeklies has a below-normal signature for precipitation April 26 through May 3. This certainly would be ideal to start drying out the fields and letting the rivers subside.

-Meteorologist Nick Stewart