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STORM APPROACHING: Another sunny day in store today with highs a few degrees warmer than yesterday with upper 70s to mid 80s across the state. There will be a noted increase in the clouds late in the day and some showers and thunderstorms are expected to move in by the afternoon hours across the western and northwestern counties. Severe weather is possible early on with these storms as the Storm Prediction Center has a slight risk of severe weather across the northern and northwestern counties for this afternoon and tonight. The main threat will be from large hail and damaging straight line winds. These will sweep across the state during the overnight hours and may linger in the eastern counties through the day on Friday. This will depend on how fast the storms move, our forecast has lingering showers and storms throughout the day Friday but there could be some clearing by early evening which would mitigate the chance of rain in far SE Iowa Friday night. All and all the weekend will be cooler again with highs back in the 70s and lows in the 50s (with some cooler locations possibly dropping into the upper 40s in northeast Iowa)
INTO NEXT WEEK: A storm may graze the southern counties Monday with a shower or storm chance but most of the state should remain dry with perhaps a few more clouds around than anything else. We’ll watch to see if this storm comes a bit farther north where it may impact more of the state with rain. The next attention would turn to what Tropical Storm Dorian is going to do. Most models have it re-curving into the Atlantic. This would slow the pattern down across the country including Iowa. This in conjunction with an approaching storm could bring more rain to the state by late next week but we’ll have to wait and see what Dorian does and how strong it could be in 5 days time.
FARTHER ON: The pattern continues to look cool across the upper Midwest into August with a slow warming trend to near seasonal levels by the beginning of State Fair on August 8th. Several chances of showers and storms around as we’ll still be in a northwesterly flow most of the extended period, but don’t take that to the bank quite yet. Several factors including Dorian mentioned earlier could change things in the long term.
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