hawkeye_wx

Lingering convection and clouds are screwing up the evening potential around here.

As usual, the storms in Iowa this morning are holding on a bit longer than models predicted.  It appears they will miss me to the north, but the outflow may push south through me, which I don't want.

This morning's GEFS and EPS mean qpf, through 15 days, are the best pair of runs for our region in quite a while.  Both are showing 2+" for most, with no more dry holes.

1 hour ago, A-L-E-K said:

 

lucky 4 what lil i've got, that central mi donut hole is something

This guy's daily briefings on YouTube are great.  He goes into detail about the drought and why it continues to be so difficult to get rain in our region.

26 minutes ago, OrdIowPitMsp said:

Hopefully it’s not lots of lower trunk growth, that could be a sign of emerald ash borer infection. 

The borer got to the ash trees around here a few years ago.  Now they all look the same... dead up top with bushy lower trunk growth.  My next door neighbor's old ash tree looks like that now.  It has been there for sixty years and now it'll have to come down.  Some friends a couple streets away have a ~20 year old ash that was fine a few years ago, but now has to come down.  I used to have a big ash in front and one in back, but they crapped out and were removed about ten years ago before the borer arrived.

Models are showing what looks like a more active pattern toward the end of the month.  However, then I look at the Euro qpf and see this.  

And this is why.  The big pool of dry air over our region just won't budge.

1 hour ago, cyclone77 said:

Today will be the 13th 90+ day at MLI.  Looking ahead there may only be one day with sub 90 through the end of the month, so we should be at 21-22 days total by the end of June.  

Cedar Rapids has only hit 90º three times.

8 hours ago, hawkeye_wx said:

I was fortunate to get 0.25" before the storm complex dried up.  It filled my rain barrel for another week, which always makes me happy.  Models show another batch of scattered storms popping around here this afternoon.

The storms did form and dropped another 0.35" on my yard, making my total today 0.60".  That's not bad at all.  The heaviest storms this afternoon passed just barely west, where 1+ inches fell.

I was fortunate to get 0.25" before the storm complex dried up.  It filled my rain barrel for another week, which always makes me happy.  Models show another batch of scattered storms popping around here this afternoon.

Storms are firing over western Iowa.  Some areas over central/western Iowa could get good rain, but models show everything dying when it reaches the dry air over eastern Iowa.  As others have said, this may be it for the next ten days.  

23 minutes ago, A-L-E-K said:

another euro run without a drop region wide

It's tough to get precip from a garbage rex block pattern like this.  I sure as hell hope this doesn't continue all summer.

Here we are at mid June and models continue to show an endless stream of rex blocks and omega blocks.  It's quite depressing.

Models got the overnight period wrong.  Some never had any rain.  A few popped an fgen band over Cedar Rapids, dropping decent rain, but all models dried up last evening.  Well, the fgen band did pop over CR and produced a solid 0.39".  I'm pretty happy.

Local retired met Terry Swails likes to say, "When it drought, signs of precipitation don't pan out".

The RRFS was one of the few models showing any decent rain here, but the latest run removed nearly all of it.  The dewpoint is in the 40s, so I'm not surprised.

1 hour ago, cyclone77 said:

Looks like a few tenths at most tonight, and that's it for the next 10+ days.  Drought ramping up quickly to be sure.

Models have struggled to figure out this system.  Some models show little or nothing here, while a couple suggest a decent fgen band could pop over us.  I hope we get something because, as you say, it's right back into the dry abyss through 7-10 days.

I barely got anything from the back-door front showers.  Most locations didn't get much.  It was cloudy all day, so the heating was limited.

The long-range model ensembles are looking better after mid month.

The final day of bubbly shower action finally brought a nice cell to my yard.  I got gusty wind, pea-size hail, and a quick 0.27" of rain.  I'll gladly take it.

2 hours ago, Powerball said:

@hardypalmguy water bill is gonna be through the roof trying to keep his palms hydrated...

Mine will be, too.  I'm watering my garden every day or two and I'm now watering the dry-sensitive parts of the lawn as well so it does not die.

A decent cluster of cells popped even closer to me today, but I only received sprinkles.  The two-day popcorn pattern produced 0.00".

God I'm sick of seeing little to no rain on every Euro run, every day.  It has been like this for two weeks.  Even at the end of today's run there is no rain in sight.  The heart of the rain and storm season is going down the toilet.  

Central Iowa got good rain this morning, but that complex lifted north.  More storms have popped over there again, while there is nothing around here.  Once again, today's Euro doesn't have a drop of rain here through day 10.  A couple months ago I posted that I was glad to get rid of the la nina drought summers.  I certainly didn't expect el nino would be worse.

Drought expansion has begun.

The dewpoint has jumped to 60º today, the highest it has been in a long time.

We have a week of 90s coming up, accelerating the onset of drought.