The latest local news, weather and high school sports from the Heartland

Rain Totals

Last nights storms were not a big deal and the severe threat was even more non-existent then first thought. The storms from the morning and overnight brought quite a bit of rain to Southeast Iowa while Northeast Missouri did not see much at all. Amounts ranged from around .10 in the southern part of the area to near an inch in the extreme northern part of the area. So you can see there was a tight gradient in the rainfall from north to south.

 Current

We started the day with extensive cloud cover and even some patchy drizzle/mist across the area. The back edge of cloud cover is beginning to work into Western Iowa. As we head into the afternoon, we can expect the clouds to start to decrease from west to east and partly cloudy skies by this evening.

 Today

We started the day with temperatures in the lower 40’s area wide. With extensive cloud cover early and strong northerly wind flow, temperatures today will struggle to rise very much. We will top out in the middle 50’s across the Heartland by this evening.

As I mentioned, strong northerly winds will help keep our temperatures down as well as add a chill to the air. Winds will be from the north at 15-20mph and gusting to 25mph today. The map below shows pressure indicated by the black lines and wind direction and speed by the wind barb symbol. When the pressure lines are close together like we see that means a tight pressure gradient which causes strong winds.

 As we can see by the wind barbs, winds are already in the 10-15mph range. They will continue to pick up as we head through the day. For those of you that don’t know how to read wind barbs, this is how you do it…..

 Wind barbs are simply a convenient way to represent both wind speed and direction in a compact graphical form. The graphic here clearly shows how to read a wind barb. Meteorologists are also accustomed to nautical miles per hour (knots) for the magnitude of the wind. Convert to statute miles per hour (mph) by adding 15% to the value in knots. Example: 60 knots = 60 + 9 mph.

 Tonight

Heading into tonight, we can expect winds to die down as the cold front continues moving further into the Ohio Valley and High pressure starts moving in from the west. This will cause mostly clear skies tonight. Being on the east side of High Pressure will have our flow out of the north and along with light winds, our temperatures will plummet tonight.

I expect temperatures in the lower 30’s by Saturday morning with some patchy frost, especially the further north you are. While there are no frost advisories out, I would not be surprised to see some later today for parts of Iowa.

 Weekend

A weak disturbance will swing through Iowa as we head through the day on Saturday. The models are having a hard time on how far south it comes and how much precipitation it will have.  My thinking is it should just bring us an increase and clouds throughout the day with temperatures in the lower 60’s. I expect any precipitation to be from Central Iowa and North at this point. It will be a pretty good day for Saturday and even better as we head into Sunday with plenty of sunshine and warmer temperatures. We will see plenty of sunshine and increasing temperatures over the next five days and no rain or storms to talk about through at least Wednesday.

In my next entry around Monday, I will have a look at how warm temperatures may get towards the end of next week as well as if any storms are in the future. And a further look ahead through the end of April and what could be a trend towards continued warmth…….

Have a good weekend Heartland!

-Brian