RAIN DECREASING: The rain shower activity will begin to decrease over the western counties of the state today into tonight. The eastern counties will still be seeing partly to mostly sunny skies as they have been seeing for the last several days. Highs today will make it into the 70s in the western counties to the lower 80s in the east.

DRY WARM WEEKEND: Heading into the weekend, skies will be mostly sunny statewide, which will be good news for those in western Iowa that has been deluged with rain over the last few days. The eastern counties though will continue with the sunny and warm weather with readings across the state in the upper 70s to lower and middle 80s through the weekend.

NEXT WEEK: A new storm system will move into the state Tuesday into Wednesday with a chance of showers and a few thunderstorms. The models have not had good consistency with regards to this system’s strength and moisture and this run shows a decent chance of some rain across the state on Wednesday of next week. We’ll see if this continues on upcoming runs. Highs will remain above seasonal levels in the upper 70s to lower 80s through the middle of the week with the cold front bringing temperatures down a bit closer to seasonal levels toward the end of next week although this run also shows another disturbance moving through Thursday night into Friday with more showers and storms possible at that time. This is still just outside the next seven days so confidence is still low at this point on that system.

FURTHER ALONG: Looking ahead, the GFS shows a more zonal pattern as we head further into the month of October. With that, the GFS also is showing some storm systems that could impact the state with some precipitation during the period. Temperatures are shown to be close to seasonal levels with some days warmer than others. We’ll see if this is still seen on model runs in the coming days.

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