Iowa Weather Report March 31st 2015: Preparing for Wednesday

AHEAD OF THE STORM: Another warm sunny day across the state today. Highs will be well into the 60s and 70s across the area, with sunshine. Winds will be a bit lighter than today but still somewhat breezy. As we head into Wednesday, temperatures will boost into the 70s and perhaps some lower 80s as well. It will be windier and more humid as well. This will be ahead of a storm system that will move through the state later Wednesday into Wednesday night and the first half of Thursday with a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Some of the storms could become strong to severe with the main threats being from damaging straight line winds and large hail. Storms should fire in the northwestern and western counties of the state during the afternoon hours and move through the state during the evening and overnight hours. Along with the severe weather threat, there will be some decent rains accompanying these storms. A good half inch of rain will be common across the state with some getting isolated heavier totals that may approach an inch or more. We’ll have more on this system in a later post. Rain will still be around in the eastern half of the state during the morning hours on Thursday before moving out. Skies will begin to clear but temperatures will be noticeably cooler as well with readings back down into the 50s and 60s for highs on Thursday.

EASTER WEEKEND: As we head into the holiday weekend, temperatures will start out cool in the 50s and 60s with readings shooting up on Easter into the 70s. Friday will feature a few more clouds mainly in our southern counties with a storm system skirting south of the state but close enough that some cloud cover is possible down there. Saturday will be mostly sunny with Easter Sunday seeing partly to mostly sunny skies. The GFS is hinting at some possible precipitation Easter Morning, but confidence in this solution is low at this point. We’ve seen precipitation before on the runs but not consistently. We’ll wait to get more data before bringing the chance of rain up. What will be up on Sunday besides the temperatures will be the wind, as the south to southwesterly winds will be blowing ahead of the next storm system that will move in at the beginning of the new work week.

EXTENDED PERIOD: Looking into the extended period, the storm that is forecast to move through the state Monday into Tuesday of next week looks to bring some cooler air to the area through the middle of the week. The winds will turn around to the south as we head into Thursday and Friday next week and this looks to last through the rest of the period. The GFS has a system around the 11th that could bring some precipitation but confidence is low at this time. Temperatures look to be above seasonal levels as we head into the middle of April.