Clouds move in today, and moisture will be close behind. We expect scattered showers to nose into NW Indiana fairly quickly this morning, but the movement and spread to the east will be very slow. In fact, most of the state likely makes it through the day with no significant precipitation. We will look for a few hundredths to about a third of an inch over 30% of the state, but coverage will be highly concentrated northwest of a line from Lafayette to Angola. To start, some of that action may not even hit the surface, coming more in the form of low clouds. Still, it is a dramatic change from the sun of yesterday.
Heavier and more frequent rains get going tomorrow as low pressure moves right through the state. In fact, we see a significant spin up around the low tomorrow afternoon and evening which may lead to a good thunderstorm outbreak over eastern Indiana, particularly north of I-70. I look for some heavy rains from Portland up through Decatur and Auburn late tomorrow. That may be honing on it too much, so don’t shoot the messenger if we see something outside of those exact areas, but you get the idea…we are concerned with heavier rain potentials east tomorrow late in the day. The map above shows rain totals through midnight tomorrow night.
Thursday should be dry, but clouds may not break up as quickly as we would like thanks to wrap around residual moisture on the backside of the low that passes through. Still, we don’t expect any new precipitation for Thursday, or even Friday for that matter. We have a slightly better chance at seeing some sun in on Friday.
The holiday weekend starts of wet. Rains are in with plenty of frequency on Saturday, and we now think that we have to delay the second wave of moisture from late Saturday into Sunday. That means we have a 48 hour precipitation outbreak, instead of 30 hour. Rain totals are the same, just spread over an extra day. Half to 2” rain totals are possible with coverage at 90% of the state. We still look for a dry Memorial day Monday, and that will continue through Tuesday into Wednesday.
Next Wednesday, the 30th, we have a minor wave moving into northern Indiana that brings a few hundredths to a third of an inch from US 24 northward into early afternoon. Coverage in the northern third of the state coverage will be nearly 80%. As we move through the afternoon, the eastern edge of the system sags south, so we can see scattered light action to finish the day along and northeast of a line from Gary to Cincinnati. Rain totals still stay in that few hundredths to third of an inch range. The rest of the state stays dry Wednesday.
We try to squeeze out a dry day for the turn of the month on the first, but the extended period shows a continuation of the active pattern with minor rains around on the 2nd, a strong system for the 4th-6th, and then another strong front on the 7th. The combined rains of the extended 11-16 day window can add up to 1-3 inches at least…a very wet start to the month of June. This also does not allow for many multi day dry stretches to get field work done.