Iowa Drying Out So Far in June

Pieces of the California/Southwest U.S. Heat Wave into The Great Plains. Iowa drying-out!

Fig. 1-3: GFS extreme maximum temperature forecast for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoon.

12Z GFS forecast of extreme heat areas in the Great Plains this week: Extreme heat will move into the Great Plains this week. Full-throttle arrival is Wednesday when widespread 101-109F evolves across western Kansas, central Nebraska and particularly the eastern half of South Dakota (Fig. 1). The heat core shifts south with similar extremes on Thursday from southern Nebraska to west/north portions of Oklahoma (Fig. 2). On Friday, the super-heat is confined mostly to Oklahoma (Fig. 3). Next weekend extreme heat is likely to evolve on western Texas. Note that the extreme heat mostly misses the U.S. Corn Belt.

The 10-day rainfall anomaly forecast based on the 12Z GFS indicates mostly dry weather across the Great Plains and Ohio Valley (Fig. 4). Ensembles are drier. Once again, wet 11-15-day forecasts are made with low confidence and reliability. The June soil moisture change analysis reveals strongest drying over Iowa (Fig. 5).

Fig. 4-5: The GFS day 1-10 rainfall anomaly forecast for the U.S. and the June (so far) soil moisture change analysis.

Elsewhere, 15-day rainfall forecasts: The persistent remarkable wet weather pattern across the Black Sea region persists the remainder of June (Fig. 6). Some of the rainfall shifts to Turkey where a major drought is occurring. Wet weather returns to Western Europe in the medium-range. In South America the forecast trend is drier across northern Argentina to far Southeast Brazil to Mato Grosso (Fig. 7). Eastern Brazil toward the coast receives some wet weather in the 15-day outlook. The Australia outlook by the GFS ENS indicates patchy wet weather on the southern coast with most of the showery character in northwestern continent (Fig. 8).

Fig. 6-8: GFS ENS percent of normal rainfall 15-day forecast for Europe/Russia, South America and Australia.