Another cold front is making its way to the south across the northern U.S. this morning, and will bring widespread rain and cooler conditions to much of the central and southern Plains through Saturday.
The image above shows the HPC forecast total precipitation for today through Sunday. Most of the precipitation will fall during the period Thursday through Saturday, and you can see that 1-2 inch amounts are forecast across a widespread area from Texas into parts of Oklahoma and Louisiana. Much needed rain that will be spread out over a 24-36 hour period in most areas.
Temperatures behind the front will be pleasantly cool for this time of year, with readings forecast to average as many as 25-30 degrees below normal across portions of southwest Kansas, western Oklahoma and the Texas / Oklahoma panhandle region on Friday:
The core of below normal temperatures will shift Southward by Saturday, with readings forecast to average as much as 15-20 degrees below normal across portions of Texas by that time:
Another, perhaps even more significant, cooldown appears to be in the offing for next week. The latest forecast from the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) is calling for a core of below normal temperatures, this time centered over the Midwest and Great Lakes, southward into the Mississippi Valley region for the period September 19th-25th:
I believe that residents of the southern tier of the U.S. should get used to relatively frequent periods of wet, cool weather as we head deeper into the fall and winter months. This is because conditions indicate that an El Nino pattern is developing in the Pacific Ocean, and such a pattern typically leads to wetter than normal conditions across the southern tier of states during the fall and winter:
This will be good news for many severely dry areas across the South, and should drastically improve (if not eliminate in some areas) drought conditions as we head into the spring planting and growing seasons.
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