THERE'S BETTER DAYS AHEAD IF YOU'RE PATIENT...

We've been talking about it the threat for frost for several days and at least for some, it became a reality Friday morning. You can see the freezing line NW of a line from roughly Williamsburg to Cedar Rapids and on to Monticello. Independence reached 30 and Cedar Rapids dipped to 32.

The coldest readings were reported in NW Iowa where Spencer dipped to 24 and the growing season is definitely over there. Here's some Iowa lows showing the SE corner as the area where little if any frost was found.

Most of Illinois stayed in the range of 35-40.

With regards to climatology, the first 32 temperature typically occurs around October 5th in my NW counties and October 20th in the SE. So for those that hit the freezing mark, I would say you were about a week ahead of schedule.

Moving on to Saturday one can see Friday night clouds increasing out to the west. They are associated with a clipper that arrives late Saturday.

As I indicated yesterday, this system is going to struggle to produce much in the way of rain, especially north of I-80 where amounts of a trace to .05" are depicted. Near and south of I-80 mesoscale models show slightly better forcing and this area might be able squeeze out some amounts in the .10 to .15" range. That appears to be the worst case scenario. The showers should show up mid to late afternoon and be gone by Sunday morning. With plenty of clouds much of the day highs are likely to remain in the low to mid 50s making for another crisp dreary day. Here's what rain totals look like.

The EURO...pretty meager.

The GFS is a bit more generous and a touch further north.

Sunday high pressure is slated to move in bringing clearing skies. After pleasant but cool day the ridge axis will be situated close to my area Sunday night. That should provide fair skies and light winds along with another chance for frost. Depending on the speed of the ridge, this time the eastern half of my area (Mississippi River east) may stand the best odds of experiencing the coldest readings. We'll keep an eye on the situation but at this point mid 30s look to be about as low as we would go.

Then we get a gradual return flow to develop next week bringing more of a westerly wind and that is what the doctor ordered for warmer temperatures. This is the projected 500mb jet stream pattern next Thursday.

The long range meteograms depict temperatures like this....keepers! First the EURO

Now the GFS

This weekend won't be one to remember but there certainly are some good things to look forward to in the long term as this weeks chilly pattern relents. Have a great weekend and roll weather...TS