Yesterday was one of the most gorgeous days we have seen in quite some time. We had ample sunshine, comfortably cool temperatures, low humidity and just the slightest breeze. Today we can expect much of the same, however, by Friday the temperatures will be on the rise and so will the dew points. Humidity will begin to rise on Friday as dew point temps climb into the 70s. Those high dew points will stay in the 70s during the afternoon for the entire weekend meaning that our old friend the heat index will be in play and could top out as high as the upper 90s! We do have the chance to see a few scattered storms Friday-Sunday which would be life savers by keeping our actual temperatures in the 80s and our of the 90s. Either way, its going to be warm and muggy this weekend! -Greg

Posted under heat wave, rain, weather

Thanks to Saturday morning’s showers and considerable cloudiness, a stable atmosphere was in place over northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin for much of the afternoon.  As a cool front pushes toward the area, though, thunderstorms will develop ahead of this boundary for the evening and nighttime hours.  The thunderstorms will be scattered in nature.

Looking at the latest trends, the best threat for any severe weather appears to stay just south of our area.  However, we may see a stronger thunderstorm or two across some of our thirteen counties.  The stronger storms will contain heavy rain, small hail, frequent lightning, and brief gusty wind.

The scattered thunderstorm activity will wind down after midnight, allowing for some breaks in the cloud cover.  Patchy fog may develop toward dawn.  It looks like we’ll sneak out a dry day on Sunday, with much of the stormy activity confined to central Illinois and points south.  We can’t rule out a widely-isolated thunderstorm, especially south of Interstate 88.

-Joe

Posted under Exactrack|HD, rain, severe weather, Threatrack, weather

If you haven’t read through Chief Meteorologist Eric Sorensen’s Tuesday blog post regarding our severe weather threat for Wednesday afternoon, I’d recommend it. You can find his blog post HERE. 

A somewhat stable airmass is in place across the Stateline for Wednesday morning.  Overnight showers and thunderstorms in western Iowa fizzled out before they crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois.  The result is a mostly cloudy morning with a few breaks of sunshine.  Humidity and temperatures will be on the rise throughout the day, with highs expected to reach the middle 80s.

The meteorological ‘ingredients,’ so to speak, are coming together for severe weather later today.  With a surface wind still expected out of the southeast and an upper-atmospheric wind out of the south-southwest, directional wind shear and storm rotation will be a concern this afternoon and evening.  A warm front is still expected to lift into northern Illinois this afternoon, at least as far north as the Interstate 88 corridor.  It is along this front that supercell thunderstorms may develop.  Supercell thunderstorms have the potential to produce strong wind gusts, large damaging hail, and possibly a tornado.  These threats will all be of local concern this afternoon, including torrential rain.

Don’t panic.  However, today is a good day to be ‘weather aware’ and keep an ‘eye on the sky.’  Make sure you have a severe weather safety plan in place.  We haven’t seen a threat like this across the Stateline for a few years.  Let’s plan for the worst and hope for the best.

As far as timing goes, our array of forecasting products are not on the exact same page. However, the best timeframe for severe thunderstorms to develop is this afternoon and evening.  Storms may begin to form in eastern Iowa around 2pm through 4pm and move east-southeast into our area after that.  Some model solutions begin a bit earlier, some begin later around dinner time.  We do know that this afternoon and evening will be active. 

Don’t forget, you can track the storms on your smart phone with our 13 Weather Authority App or sign up for severe weather text alerts.

-Joe

Posted under rain, safety, severe weather, Threatrack, tornado, weather, Wind

You’ll notice an up-tick in the humidity and heat on Tuesday. That combination will be enough to fuel some thunderstorms ahead of an area of low pressure Wednesday. Here’s the timing of the first round of quick-moving thunderstorms. I don’t expect much here before about 5am Wednesday morning, but depending on the forward movement of the storms, they could produce gusty wind.

As far as rainfall goes, it doesn’t look like we’ll get too much to handle. Model average is around an inch. However, these are large-scale models. We know that individual thunderstorm complexes are not uniform and can put down heavier amounts locally. With that being said, a few 2-3 inch reports can’t be ruled out.

Posted under rain

Brace yourselves. Clouds and rain are in the forecast….again!  If you thought it’s been cloudy and rainy lately, you are correct.  Looking at the past 30 days, there have been 21 days with at least a trace of rain reported at Chicago Rockford International Airport! 

Sunday will start off mostly cloudy and mainly dry, with just a few isolated showers dotting the radar.  Scattered showers and thunderstorms will become more numerous as we head into the afternoon and evening hours.  A breezy south wind, 10-20mph, will help temperatures rise to near 75 despite the clouds.

This system that is headed our way for Sunday brought severe weather to the Great Plains on Saturday.  While the chance for severe weather is low locally, there is a minimal threat for a few stronger thunderstorms Sunday afternoon. I anticipate the best threat of severe weather to stay just south of our local area, affecting Bloomington, Peoria, Springfield, and St. Louis. 

The showery, thundery weather will continue Sunday night as well.  As the system pushes off to our east, a few lingering scattered showers will remain in the forecast through Monday afternoon. 

-Joe

Posted under FutureTrack, rain, severe weather, Threatrack, weather

It has been a very cool and fairly rainy week, but as we look ahead to the weekend we hope for sunshine and warmth to return. The good news is that the sunshine will indeed begin to return as soon as this afternoon. That sunshine will be ample tomorrow as well, but by Sunday we return to the chance for some on and off showers as a frontal boundary makes its way toward the Stateline. The bad news is that temperatures won’t warm that much within the next three days. Highs today put us in the upper 60s, and both Saturday and Sunday will sit in the low 70s. Warmer does move in by the middle of next week when we could push close to 80 degrees. -Greg

Posted under rain, weather

The first Tropical Storm of the 2013 season has started to leave its mark on Western Florida. Tropical Storm Andrea has a sustained wind speed of 60mph and wind gusts in excess of 80mph. The storm is bringing tropical storm conditions to nearly all of Northern Florida and is expected to dump 4-7″ of rain across the state before it exits late tonight into tomorrow. It’s current track will take it across the state roughly 100 miles north of Tampa Bay. Andrea then looks to take a path just to the east of the East Coast and out to the North Atlantic by Saturday afternoon. This is the first named storm of 2013 and this season follows one of the most active on record in 2012 when there were 19 named storms. Hurricane season lasts from June 1st to November 30th. -Greg

Posted under rain, tropical weather

We are settling into a brief period where scattered on and off sprinkles and showers will track through the Stateline. For the next 48 hours we can expect a mostly cloudy sky and nuisance rain. A low pressure system is stationed just to our northwest and will dip down to our south within the next 24 hours. As it makes its journey, it will continue to spiral counter clockwise and keep the rain machine turned on. We will see a return to drier conditions and even some extended periods of sunshine once the low moves out of the area heading into the weekend. -Greg

Posted under rain, weather

A stalled out warm front that stretched through parts of the Missouri and mid-Mississippi Valleys has caused torrential rain and flooding across much of central and eastern Iowa.   The weekend rainfall total was over 3 inches in Muscatine, just 125 miles southwest of Rockford.  Some locations in central Iowa picked up over 8 inches of rain throughout the weekend!  Even parts of the Illinois River Valley, near Princeton and Kewanee, had flash flood warnings on Sunday evening. 

The majority of the showers and thunderstorms associated with that warm front moved to the southeast, with the remnant light showers affecting the Stateline area during the weekend.   That will change, however. 

The warm front is expected to slowly push north over the next 48 hours, bringing the threat for more frequent rounds of showers and thunderstorms to northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.  The rain will be scattered in nature, so rainfall totals could be drastically different in Stockton versus Genoa, for example.  While it is tough to pinpoint how much rain will fall across our entire 13-county area, we do have an idea that some of the heavier thunderstorms will contain quick downpours.  Upon analyzing six forecast models and keeping an eye on radar trends, we may very well end up with an inch or even up to two inches of precipitation in spots.  The model outliers are the GFS model (0.83″ of rain in Rockford through Tuesday evening) and the GEM model (2.57″ in Rockford through Tuesday evening).  On average, the rainfall projection is around 1.44 inches, which is consistent with our in-house Adonis FutureTrack Rainfall model.

-Joe

Posted under flooding, FutureTrack, rain, weather

The chance for showers and even a few thunderstorms will increase after midnight and into the pre-dawn hours of Sunday.  A nearly-stationary warm front will help to act as trigger for these showers to form. The general direction of the precipitation will be east-southeast along and just north of the warm front.  We will see the scattered showers and thunderstorms continue for the morning hours on Sunday. It looks like we will see a break in the action midday, with just a few isolated showers and an otherwise mostly cloudy sky. Temperatures will reach the lower 60s by afternoon.

More scattered showers and a few thunderstorms will redevelop and dampen our Sunday evening and overnight.  The warm front will remain to our south even into Memorial Day (Monday), so scattered showers and thunderstorms are a possibility yet again.  While severe weather is expected to stay in the Great Plains, some of our thunderstorms may put down heavier rain and small hail.

Don’t forget! You can track the rain on your smartphone with the 13 Weather Authority ExacTrack App.  -Joe

Posted under FutureTrack, rain, Threatrack, weather