Word of the day: Rain

The much-advertised low pressure system is taking shape over the southwest. It will head northeast over the next couple days, swinging its warm front into Illinois. The warm front will have a lot of moisture to work with as it draws air from the Gulf of Mexico. As the air approaches the warm front, it will rise and lead to clouds and rain. Along and south of the front, the rain is expected to be locally heavy. It appears that many of us will come away with at least a quarter-inch of rain, but I'm seeing indications of widespread amounts of at least a half-inch. Some instability will enter into the equation Tuesday morning, which will lead to some pockets of thunderstorms in the swath of rain. This will only lead to even higher rainfall totals in a few locations.

As we see during the wintertime with snow, the track of the low and how the warm front sets up will strongly influence how much rain we get. However, there's been enough consistency in the model runs that it appears the heaviest rain axis will be just to the south of our viewing area... but we still need to keep tabs on any rainfall amounts because the ground is saturated and many area rivers are already running higher than normal. Check the river stage data from my previous post to see the latest river flood forecasts.