WINNERS AND LOSES, A CLOSE GAME...

In the game of weather, there's winners and losers, that's especially true when it comes to precipitation. Since late spring we've seen system after system deposit their rains in very sharp abrupt delineations. This past disturbance was another example of that with some parts of my area seeing up to 3 inches of rain and others reporting little if any. This graphic shows how this time around the rainfall winners were those of you in my northern and eastern counties.

This closer perspective of the 24 hour period ending Friday morning shows how I-80 in eastern Iowa was once again a line of demarcation with little falling south and plenty in spots to the north. Near the Mississippi the totals increase again north to south with 1/2" or more from near Burlington to the Quad Cities and on into NW Illinois.

This was a very good thing as much of my area that needed rain got it. Before it fell, the latest drought index was an ugly one along and north of I-80 with many areas in moderate to severe drought. As you can see, we couldn't have drawn up a better place for the heavier rains to fall.

Now, if you are one of those who still needs rain or are looking for even more, I have good news. Two more systems are on the way and both look to be rain producers, especially Monday's storm. Before we get to that, here's the Friday afternoon satellite imagery showing the the last of the showers and clouds departing.

That sets us up for a pretty good weekend of weather with temperatures that are going to be well above normal. One thing we might see early Saturday are some pockets of fog, especially in my NE counties. If they do materialize increasing winds should mix it out early and readings will warm into the upper 70s NE to the low to perhaps mid 80s SW. The only thing hindering readings from reaching the mid 80s would be increasing clouds from our next weather maker.

Sunday a cool front inches into the area and it will likely generate passing clouds and possibly a few showers, mainly NW of the Quad Cities. The rain threat looks minimal and there should be enough sunshine and SW winds to send temperatures back into the upper 70s and low 80s.

Sunday night the cool front has pretty much come to a halt and stalled over SE Iowa as it waits for the next round of energy to generate a low pressure on its tail end in Oklahoma. As that rides the boundary northeast towards Iowa, it will provide the forcing necessary to generate showers and storms that get underway in eastern Iowa and far NW Illinois Sunday night. Eventually, the low tracks towards the Quad Cities Monday evening dragging a weak cool front with it. That should keep scattered showers and storms going Monday and Monday evening. By way of animation here's what the system and its precipitation looks like on the GFS. As the loop ends you can also see the mid-week disturbance hot on its heels.

The Monday set-up does involve a low chance of severe storms in a few spots in roughly the SE half of my area, especially from about the Quad Cities southeast. There is ample sheer but unless we can get more heating to increase instability, the threat appears minimal.

The Wednesday set-up is pretty dynamic but timing and instability is very much in question so we'll tackle that when the time comes. Between the two storms, models are indicating some nice rain totals. About 2/3rds of this comes in the first round of rain Monday.

The EURO

The GFS

The WPC blend

Temperature Monday thru Thursday will remain above normal but a cooling trend of several days will get readings back to more fall-like levels by the start of next weekend.

That's all I've got time for now. I'm on the road to Iowa City where I will be at the Iowa Penn State football game Saturday afternoon thanks to the kindness of a good friend. The seats are on the 45 yard line, 10 rows up, behind the Iowa bench. Today on one of the ticket sights, I saw a similar seat and the asking price was $2000. Are you kidding me!

I'll make no bones about it, growing up in Coralville/ Iowa City I'm a Hawkeye homer. When I was a kid I used to go to knothole games for a 1 dollar (this was in the period known as the dark era of Iowa football). This would have been in the 60's when the Hawks were getting destroyed and the stadium was half full to start and far less than that when it was over. You couldn't give seats away. We used to eat frosty malts and then hop the wall at halftime and go sit behind the benches of teams like Ohio State and Michigan. We got a good look at Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, and the All-Americans that played for them. They padded their stats and it wasn't unusual for the score to be 42 to nothing at the half. Thank God those pastings are over and done.

When I couldn't go to the games, (they weren't on TV back then) I would listen to the game on a transistor radio in the yard with my buddies. My house in Coralville was close enough to Kinnick that we could hear the crowd cheer or groan depending on the play. It was funny too because the radio had a couple second delay and just by listening to the distant crowd we already had an idea something good or bad had happened, we just needed the details.

ED PODOLAK

One of my great early memories was watching Ed Podolak rush for 286 yards on 17 carries (16 yards a pop) against Northwestern in 1968. Iowa actually won the game by the score of 68 to 34! Not much defense that day. Podolak accounted for over 4200 yards of offense in his career and has not been inducted into the Iowa Hall of Fame. That should change, he was fun to watch. So much for the good old days! Go Hawks and roll weather....TS