Dry for the start of this week with no rain in the forecast today, tomorrow and most of Wednesday. A cool front swept into the state last night, so temps today are going to be cooler than yesterday, but we do not expect anything too overly dramatic. Our next front arrives Wednesday. While we do not think the best precipitation moves in until the evening and overnight, we do see a chance of some scattered light activity as the clouds build over the northern quarter of the state through the day Wednesday. Rains up north can be a few hundredths to a tenth or two with only 30% coverage during daytime hours Wednesday. Then, rains of .25”-.5” move through Wednesday night with coverage at 80%. This will be a nice, sweeping batch of rain for the state.
Behind that moisture, we see no additional rain Thursday, but we may not dry down right away. Then for Friday into Saturday, we see an additional wave of action that brings .1-.4” rains to about 40% of the state, and then .25”-1” rains with 50% coverage following that up on Sunday. These two additional systems would skew their better coverage over the northern half to two thirds of the state, but they are not exceptional looking systems either. However, these, combined with the rains we see at midweek this week, will likely delay remaining harvest over the state as we work toward the turn of the month.
We do see nice, dry weather returning next week, with no rains Monday through Friday Our next front to watch will be for Saturday the 5th, bringing .25”-.5” with coverage at 70%. That will give a nice window for additional field work. However, we also look for our first frost to develop in there as well for overnight the 1st into the 2nd. Temps will fall to freezing or below over the northern half of the state, and that should lead to our first frost. It will be a killing frost in about 50% of that area, which is not all that significant…but with the normal first frost date for those areas back around October 8th….waiting to get our first frost until early November is a bit news worthy. So, keep an eye out for that.