Morning drizzle and clouds will be moving out by the afternoon paving the way for a fairly decent end to the work week. Highs this afternoon will recover into the lower 60s with light winds.
The weekend will hold a good amount of warmth along with a rain chance, especially on Sunday. Before then, Saturday will be the best day for outdoor activities with partly sunny skies and highs in the lower 70s. Once we reach Sunday, conditions will be changing ahead of a cold front that will move through in the afternoon and evening. More moisture will be drawn up ahead of this feature and you'll actually be able to feel a little bit of humidity, too. This moisture and some instability will provide the focus for scattered showers and storms by Sunday afternoon.
The amount of energy that these storms will have to utilize isn't all that impressive, with the higher amounts of energy focused mainly to the south of the region. That will keep the threat for stronger storms out of the Quad Cities for now, though we will be watching to see if any additional energy can make it's way closer to us by Sunday afternoon.
While this next round of rainfall isn't expected to be widespread or extremely heavy, we still do not need it at this point. A viewer named "Billy" writes in questioning whether we need rainfall or not. Take a look at the map above. This is the current soil moisture situation. Nearly 100% of Iowa has saturated soils.
Think of the soil like a sponge, once it becomes full of water, any incoming water simply runs off and can't soak in. That is exactly what the soil conditions are across much of the Midwest right now thanks to heavy snow this winter and now some rain events this spring. Any additional rain we receive will just simply run off.
What we want is a good week to week and a half with very little moisture and a lot of sunny days. That will allow the moisture in the ground to sink and dry out some of the topsoils so that the next rain can soak in easier.
Regarding the river flooding situation, crests are occurring now on the Mississippi River and will continue this weekend into early next week. Additional crests are likely in the next couple of weeks, but the severity will depend on how much additional rainfall the region receives. Something we'll be tracking in the days ahead.
Meteorologist Andrew Stutzke
