Thursday, October 8, 2009
Flood and flash flood watches are currently posted for the southeastern Plains through much of the Ohio River Valley, while freeze warnings were posted across the northern Plains. Based on that sentence alone, one can surmise that wet and cold weather continues to dominant the near-term forecast for the Nation’s midsection. Better than an inch of rain will fall over the next 48 to 72 hours for the southeastern Corn Belt, the southeastern Plains, and most of the Delta. The area targeted to see the heaviest of the rains, which will generally be on the order of two to three inches but in localized spots could be upwards of four to even five inches, would be far northeastern Texas, eastern Oklahoma, far southeastern Kansas, the southeastern half of Missouri, northwestern Arkansas, and southern parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Regarding the cold, temperatures in the 25-30 degree range are expected tomorrow morning for the far northwestern Corn Belt northward through the northern Plains. Saturday morning should find similar lows there, but also covering a bigger part of Minnesota and also working into Wisconsin. Sunday morning should find lows in the 20-30 degree range over basically the entire western Corn Belt, as well as over all of Wisconsin and far northern Illinois. Tuesday morning still looks to be the best time frame to expect sub-freezing temperatures to dig deeper into eastern parts of the Corn Belt. The threat of weekend snowfall looks to be placed further north on today’s forecast. Instead of the Kansas/Nebraska and Iowa/Missouri border areas, it looks to be the Nebraska/South Dakota and Iowa/Minnesota border area with the better chances to see the first snow of the fall season. Most of this would be for Sunday night through early Monday, though the South Dakota/Nebraska border area could see some snow already tomorrow night. There may not be a lot of moisture for the Tuesday/Wednesday time frame of next week, but rain appears increasingly likely by early Thursday, favoring areas east of the Mississippi River with the best amounts.
