Wednesday Evening North Central Illinois Weather Summary

A high pressure ridge has taken control of Stateline weather. It stretches ffrom Hudson Bay in Canada through Minnesota, far western Iowa southward through eastern Texas into the Gulf of Mexico.  Skies have been sunny to mostly sunny all day across the area with mostly clear skies lasting through the night. The air is relatively dry as evidenced by the large temperature/dewpoint(36/17) spread at the Rockford airport at 5 pm.  With the mostly clear skies, and winds becoming light after dark, the temperature will drop quite quickly this evening with moderate radiational cooling. There has been some low level moisture added to the lowest level of atmosphere because of recent snowmelt. That limited amount of moisture will probably contribute to some patchy fog in low lying rural areas after midnight, and promote heavy frost formation on automoble windshields of parked cars. The ridge of high pressure to our west will shift slowly to the east Thursday and Friday with more sunny days and mostly clear nights, and slowly warming temperatures that will reach above 40 degrees for the first time since January 24 on Friday. Temperatures will continue to hold in the 40's for afternoon high's from Saturday through Wednesday of next week.  There goes the snow....finally.  With some rain on the weekend, and again early next week, there may be some rises of  local rivers because of runoff.   Be sure to stop by the First Warn Weather Blog for more information!