Friday Afternoon

As usual with summertime weather patterns, conditions change very slowly.  But, that can make a large change in rainfall patterns and production.  That goes for this weekend.  Several upper air systems will make a run at us, so we’ll see plenty of clouds and higher humidity, but any significant rain may hold off until Sunday night into Monday.  Here’s how it is shaping up…

A weak upper air system will pass over us late tonight.  It’ll bring us plenty of mid and high level clouds so temperatures should be quite a bit warmer tonight (mid 60’s).  A mix of clouds and sunshine tomorrow as we wait for the next disturbance to arrive.  Highs should be in the mid 80’s.  The next system is somewhat better organized, but is expected to stall by late tomorrow over Missouri.  That may be close enough to push some showers/thunderstorms into our area tomorrow night.  However, it probably won’t  – just about a 20-30% for rain Saturday night.  The Missouri system will probably begin to drift eastward by late Sunday, thus we’ll see our highest rain chances Sunday night into Monday.  (Also, possibly late Sunday afternoon.

The Weather Service’s rain amount prediction group is really big on this system – they are forecasting 2″+ for all of our area from Saturday night through Monday night.  The fact that everything will be so slow moving can certainly add to higher rain totals, but the whole area getting 2″+ inches would certainly be a big surprise to me.