The near term forecast is unchanged this morning. WE have one more dry day in here today before a minor front sweeps through tomorrow. Temps will be mostly normal today with the sunshine, and it will yield a pleasant day, by August standards. The front that comes through tomorrow is not impressive, yielding only a few hundredths to a quarter to third of an inch, with coverage at 60%. We may have to keep an eye out for a heavier shower or thunderstorm in a few spots, like NE Indiana tomorrow morning, and east central Indiana tomorrow afternoon…but those heavier events will be highly limited in scope. Dry for Saturday.
Our next system moves in on Sunday. This system now looks pretty lame for the daytime hours over the state, and we are dropping precipitation yet again to a few hundredths to at most half an inch. The higher end of the range will be dependent on thunderstorms. This precipitation will break out mostly in central Indiana, as southern parts of the state are seeing less of a chance in our eyes this morning. There still is potential for an outbreak of strong thunderstorms overnight Sunday night into early Monday. If those develop, that could bring some 1-inch rain totals in central Indiana and perhaps southeast Indiana, but we on not exceptionally keen on a big time outbreak. Once again, notice that northern Indiana is being left out of any significant precipitation event.
Dry for Monday through most of next week, at least through Thursday. Models introduced a new wrinkle late yesterday and are still playing with it this morning by bringing a strong low out of MO, across southern IL and over the southern half of IN from next Thursday night through Friday. If it develops as suggested on the European, that would trigger some 1-2 inch rains for Friday. We are not making that change permanent in our forecast yet, but are throwing it out there to let you know we are watching, and we may make a tweak to our late week forecast tomorrow morning, once we get a couple more model runs if they confirm the change. Stay tuned. Still, even if we do end up making that change, the northern third to half of the state misses out, and that means over the next 10 days to 2 weeks, we may see only a few hundredths to a couple of tenths worth of moisture in that part of the state. That will lead to some pretty big complaints.
The extended period shows no changes this morning, with an upper-level high sitting over the Great Lakes and southern Ontario through most of the 11-16 day window. Temps remain near normal to slightly below normal now through the 24th.