Now that we have a break from the relentless rain over the last week, we have some time to look longer range as some rather interesting weather patterns taking shape by late September and early October. Hurricane Polo has formed in the eastern Pacific Ocean and we are continuing to see signals of a rather large conveyor belt of moisture headed our way. Above, European Ensemble precipitation anomalies are pushing 200-400% of normal rainfall from Mexico, through the High Plains

After a very active couple of days, a break from the heavy rain is in sight. The pattern will remain in a bit of a holding pattern, but it should give way to drier conditions, especially Tuesday onwards Three-day rainfall (above) hit some remarkable levels for September across the area. Radar estimated across eastern Iowa, northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin topped 5" across a widespread area. SEPTEMBER RAIN - DUBUQUE SEPTEMBER RAIN - QUAD CITIES Month-to-date rainfall t

While not record-breaking locally, July and August have been well on the higher end of the climatology in terms of total precipitation across the corn belt with repeated waves of severe weather and heavy rainfall. Eastern Iowa and northern Illinois are well into the top 25 years on record (since 1893) with some portions of the Chicagoland region in the top five all time. Farther east across Indiana and Ohio this stretch did in fact break records for total precipitation. What

Last week at this time I was promoting a a multi-day rainfall event that I felt had the potential to be quite significant with most areas seeing 2-5 inches of rain, locally more (7" plus) in the heaviest band. Models did a good job showing the excessive rain potential but struggled until midweek to determine where the heaviest amounts would occur. As it turned out, the stationary boundary (ring of fire) laid out over southern Iowa into central Illinois and Indiana from Tuesda

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