hawkeye_wx

Unfortunately, this active pattern is playing out like the op Euro has been predicting. The storm train will continue to dump rain from the central plains to Missouri and Arkansas, but up here there will be little to nothing. We got the nice one inch of rain on June 24th, but instead of being the beginning of a change to a wetter pattern, it was just a one-time tease. Today's rain chance is pretty low and next weekend's event is gone. The next chance is a week away, yet again. It's nice there is no heat, but it has been a frustrating and boring spring/summer.

There is good model agreement that the midweek frontal passage will be timed very poorly for eastern Iowa. There is a good chance much of my area will get little or no rain from it.

Chicago low says, "You think you're done with me? Maybe I'll just back westward into the city again and keep dumping."

Mother Nature could not have timed the flooding rain worse for the NASCAR race today.

I only got enough rain to wet the pavement this weekend. The real rain was north yesterday and southeast today.

Now 80 mph wind is being reported from the line.

74 mph wind from the potent bow echo moving through Keokuk.

The region-wide drought may get a kick in the nuts over the next couple weeks... especially south of I-80. I just hope the storm complexes don't continuously reinforce the boundary south and prevent good rain from reaching areas farther north. This is what I'm worried about... the op Euro scenario. A corridor from Nebraska to the Ohio Valley gets drought-denting rain, maybe even more, while pockets north of I-80 get little to nothing.

A decent complex of thundershowers moved through eastern Iowa overnight and dropped about 0.20" in my gauge. Models didn't show much. I'm expecting much of the action over the next week to pass south of me.

The thick smoke has moved out of my area. It's still hazy, but the sun is brighter and the smell is much less. The west shore of Lake Michigan looks to be stuck in this crap for quite a while.

This is, by far, the thickest smoke we've had in eastern Iowa this year. Satellite shows it may begin to thin out over the next couple hours.

EPS is showing where the ring of fire may set up. Southern Minnesota, northern Iowa, and southern Wisconsin may end up pretty dry. The op Euro shows little to no rain over much of that area over the next ten days. I'm sure glad we got some solid rain Saturday.

The wind has really been whipping today. I had to put some potted flowers in the garage so they wouldn't break. We haven't had a windy day like this in several weeks.

For a while it looked like I might get goose-egged. At the last minute, the gap in the line of storms moving across eastern Iowa filled in and soaked the Cedar Rapids area. There were a couple scattered warnings in the area, but I only received beautiful, straight-down rain. Most personal gauges across the metro area are reporting over an inch. I got 0.96". It is no coincidence our dewpoint shot up to 70º late this evening. It feels and smells good to finally have humid, wet air in June.

Lingering convection and clouds are screwing up the evening potential around here.

As usual, the storms in Iowa this morning are holding on a bit longer than models predicted. It appears they will miss me to the north, but the outflow may push south through me, which I don't want.

This morning's GEFS and EPS mean qpf, through 15 days, are the best pair of runs for our region in quite a while. Both are showing 2+" for most, with no more dry holes.

This guy's daily briefings on YouTube are great. He goes into detail about the drought and why it continues to be so difficult to get rain in our region.

The borer got to the ash trees around here a few years ago. Now they all look the same... dead up top with bushy lower trunk growth. My next door neighbor's old ash tree looks like that now. It has been there for sixty years and now it'll have to come down. Some friends a couple streets away have a ~20 year old ash that was fine a few years ago, but now has to come down. I used to have a big ash in front and one in back, but they crapped out and were removed about ten years ago before the borer arrived.

Models are showing what looks like a more active pattern toward the end of the month. However, then I look at the Euro qpf and see this. And this is why. The big pool of dry air over our region just won't budge.

Cedar Rapids has only hit 90º three times.

The storms did form and dropped another 0.35" on my yard, making my total today 0.60". That's not bad at all. The heaviest storms this afternoon passed just barely west, where 1+ inches fell.

I was fortunate to get 0.25" before the storm complex dried up. It filled my rain barrel for another week, which always makes me happy. Models show another batch of scattered storms popping around here this afternoon.

Storms are firing over western Iowa. Some areas over central/western Iowa could get good rain, but models show everything dying when it reaches the dry air over eastern Iowa. As others have said, this may be it for the next ten days.

It's tough to get precip from a garbage rex block pattern like this. I sure as hell hope this doesn't continue all summer.