Thursday, October 22, 2009
Rain was starting to work its way east of the Mississippi River early on this Thursday, with extensive rain still falling further west across large parts of Nebraska (actually falling as snow in western parts of the state), Iowa, Missouri, eastern Kansas, Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma, and eastern Texas. In the Corn Belt, heaviest rains so far have been over southeastern Minnesota through parts of Wisconsin; I can confirm about 1.5 inches at Rochester. Biggest rains anywhere in the Nation since yesterday morning have clearly been over eastern parts of Texas, where there was a strip of very heavy rains from west of San Antonio northward to just west of Dallas; radar is estimating three to five inches there and numerous counties were under flash flood warnings. It will be the Mississippi River Valley that gets the heaviest of the rains over the next 24 hours, with additional rains of one to two inches expected for southeastern Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, eastern Missouri, western Indiana, and all of the Delta (with the central and southern Delta being an area to expect locally even heavier totals; flash flood watches have been posted). Most of the precipitation will be in eastern and northeastern parts of the Corn Belt for tomorrow. Light precipitation looks to move back into the western Corn Belt for Saturday night, with that system moving eastward through late on Monday. A stronger system is still forecast for the middle of next week, and the change on that system today is that it will be arriving earlier; look for most of the precipitation to fall on October 27-28 (instead of October 28-29). Behind that system will come a very cold air mass that will drop temperatures to well-below normal levels for the last days of this month and into the first day or two of November. Harvesting will still take place today in the eastern Corn Belt, but other than that it looks the like the harvest is now shut down for all intents and purposes for the rest of this month. We will need good weather in November like never before to get these crops harvested. Early indications would point to additional weather systems in the first week of November; track and strength of those systems is yet to be determined.
