Iowa Weather Report September 30th 2015: Joaquin Keeps Us Cool

WATCHING JOAQUIN: Our weather will be fairly calm and dry with mostly sunny skies and readings in the 60s to near 70 for highs with lows in the 40s through the weekend. We’re stuck in this pattern due to Tropical Storm Joaquin that is close to the Bahamas. This system is forecast to drift west for a few days and then swing to the north just off the east coast. Typically when we have storms in this position, whatever our weather is at the time, it will stay that way until the system clears. The issue we’re having is where Joaquin will go during the weekend. There is some inconsistency with the track of the system and this in turn can change our forecast if the system were to move one way or the other. We’ll keep watching for any changes to could drastically change our forecast over the next couple of days.

OUR NEXT SYSTEM: The GFS keeps us dry through the weekend and into the beginning of next week, however the next system will approach by next Wednesday with a chance of showers and perhaps a few thunderstorms as well. Of course this is dependent on where Joaquin will be at this point. On this run, the remnants of Joaquin are shown to be moving northeast through the Canadian Maritimes. Because of this, systems will begin to move once again. However as mentioned before, Joaquin’s track is vital to what our weather may be for not only this week, this weekend but early next week as well. So again as mentioned before Joaquin will continue to influence our forecast for at least the next seven days and confidence in where it’s going is still low at this time.

BEYOND NEXT WEEK: When we take a look ahead further into October, the GFS shows the main storm track moving north of the state and temperatures heading back above seasonal levels through the end of the period. It show mainly dry weather until the end of the period when some activity is shown to move into the state. We did see this yesterday but given the current circumstances, we’ll wait for a longer trend to develop before raising our confidence levels this far out.