Dry weather continues through next week

It probably would not come as a shock if I told you that rain chances over the next several days are fleeting to none at this point. Precipitation chances have been low to non-existent the entire month of October, with drought expanding across the Weather First area.

Most of southeastern Minnesota and northern Iowa is in a moderate drought, with only a few areas narrowly avoiding being in drought for the time being.

There is currently only one chance of rain for our area over the next week to ten days, and it is a meager chance at best. A cold front will be tracking across Minnesota and Iowa late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. While this cold front is going to bring much colder air into our area, the chances of precipitation remain on the lower end, primarily due to a lack of moisture in the air.

Not only will the lack of moisture make rain chances hard to come by this next week, but the lack of any deep areas of low pressure or troughing in the upper levels of the atmosphere will provide us with very little in terms of forcing that can get any precipitation events going.

Since late August, most weather systems that have tracked through have had the exact same issue as we are seeing with this weeks system. There just has not been any moisture for these fronts to work with, preventing widespread precipitation events from taking place.

Rochester airport has only seen a trace of rain since the beginning of the month. Our friends down in Mason City have not seen a single drop of rain for the entire month of October! If this trend continues, there is an increasing possibility that this October may end up being one of the driest October’s on record for some folks across our area, unless we can get a good soaker to close out the month.