Recent Rainfall Keeps Moisture in the Atmosphere

In just the past four days we've received over half of our monthly rainfall for July.  And that moisture is now evaporating back into the atmosphere.

A cold front swept through Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois Sunday evening bringing another round of severe weather in and around Chicago.  For us, it was just a few spotty showers.

Behind the front came a drier air mass which helped drop our dew points from the upper 70's, to near 80 degrees, down into the low to mid 60's.  A big relief from what we've recently felt.  But because of the recent rainfall and maturing corn crop, our dew points won't drop much past the low 60's the next several days.

With nearly three inches of rain absorbed in the soil, some of that is being evaporated back into the atmosphere with the warming sun.  Also, evapotranspiration rates from surrounding corn crop have reached their peak and will continue to do so through August.  So with the constant feed of moisture in the atmosphere it will be hard to get our dew points to drop much below 60 degrees.  This is very typical during the heart of summer.  So while it won't feel like 100 degrees for a while, there will still be a little humidity in the air this week.