MON MIDDAY RADAR Monday afternoon radar shows a cluster of heavy storms over southern Minnesota and some light showers over southeastern Nebraska. There are scattered areas of light to moderate rains and thunderstorms over 30% of Arkansas, Mississippi, southern Alabama… 40% of Georgia and 60% of the Florida panhandle. All other areas and the Plains, the Midwest and the Delta regions are dry.
WEEK 1 = The afternoon midday GFS model continues to run pretty wet all the next 5 days. It shows widespread significant rains over 60 to 70% of Minnesota …eastern and central Iowa and all of Wisconsin …Illinois …Missouri …Tennessee …Kentucky …Indiana …Ohio …and Michigan. Rainfall amounts are generally in the 1-2.5″/ 25-60mm range but there are small areas of 3″/75mm rains over various portions of Indiana …Illinois …eastern Iowa …southern Minnesota …and southern Wisconsin. This is unchanged from what the GFS model was showing at 6z and 0z early Monday morning.
In fact it would probably be better if we change the time frame from 1 to 5 days out to the next SEVEN days. This image shows the rainfall over all the next 7 days and as you can see most of the rain seems to fall over the ECB. The image on the LEFT represents the TOTAL rainfall over the next 7 days … while the image on the RIGHT represents the rainfall anomalies in inches over the next 7 days. Notice that over the WCB as well as the central and upper Plains the rainfall over the next 7 days is not that impressive.
WEEK 2 = If we take a look at the week 2 GFS forecast …we see something quite significant. All the significant heavy rains push well to the south into the Delta and the Deep South area and up the eastern seaboard. Most of the Midwest as well as the central and upper Plains are quite dry.
What this means is that these rains over the next 7 days are going to be VERY important. Many areas are reporting JUNE 2017 has been in the top 10 driest JUNES on record. And as we can see from the WEEK 2 forecast there is not a lot of additional rain coming in after the next 7 days.
So, although temperatures will be fairly cool in week 2… the rainfall will be lacking. In other words except for the interval of June 12 – 18 it may end up being that most of the Midwest and certainly the central and upper Plains … will end up with a pretty dry JUNE 2017. That is what makes this upcoming rain so important.
Looking at the GFS ensembles we see that it generally supports the operational run of the afternoon GFS. In WEEK 1, the GFS ensembles have the best rains centered over Minnesota, Wisconsin into the ECB …with much less rains once you cross interstate 35 and move into the western portions of the WCB and the Plains.
In week 2 the GFS ensemble shows a general 1-2″/ 25-50mm rains across the ECB and 0.5-1.5″ 12-38mm over the WCB.
It will be interesting to see what the afternoon European model is depicting with regard to the rainfall over the next seven days.
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