SLOWLY BUT SURELY...

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Slowly but surely we've been making strides in improving the drought conditions in the Midwest. The recent rain from this past weekend certainly helped make a dent in the very dry conditions.

Here's the latest drought monitor that was released Thursday morning:

The severe drought area (dark brown) shrunk in Iowa from 14.1% last week to 9.6% this week. The moderate drought area went from 45.1% to 34.9%. And getting this rain is important now because once winter hits we will not be able to work on the drought conditions with a frozen ground.

We had a good, steady rain on Thursday and rain will wind down into Friday. We'll have a windy and cool day with clouds gradually clearing. Winds may gust as high as 40 mph:

Temperatures will be slightly improved from Thursday, but still cool:

There will be more sunshine on Saturday and temperatures will be warmer.. in fact this may be the warmest day we see for a while:

Cooler air starts to move in on Halloween.. we'll be about 10 degrees cooler:

We'll have a cooler, drier pattern setting up into November:

We'll have below normal temperatures and below normal precipitation chances for the first week of November:

We'll see what the rest of November holds!

RK