Quiet Weather Ahead of Mid-Week Clipper System

If you were set to head out early this morning, you may have been greeted to some dense fog. Fortunately, it was a quiet start. The fog did get a bit dense in spots to the north and west of Rockford. A few places, including Galena, Monroe, Janesville, and Savanna all saw visibility under a half mile at some point this morning (pictured to the left is Beloit). It's thick fog like what we saw this morning where you need to have the urge to take your time while driving the morning commute. Once the sun came out, and those southwesterly winds increased a little bit, we saw that fog layer weaken and dissipate by mid-morning.

The rest of this Monday features plenty of sunshine early on, but clouds will eventually cover our skies by this afternoon. While most areas remain dry, a stray shower or spotty drizzle cannot entirely be ruled out. Highs today climb into the upper 40s, with a few spots climbing into the low 50s for the second straight day in a row. And we even had a weak cold front pass through the area this morning. The worst of the cooler air doesn’t arrive until tomorrow. Skies tonight will remain cloudy to start, but then gradually clear early Tuesday morning, allowing for lows to drop back into the upper 20s. This is all thanks to an area of high pressure that slides over the state of Illinois by tomorrow morning. This will help dry the atmosphere out and give us plenty of sunshine to start, but clouds will once again gradually increase through the afternoon.

Our next system to bring the Stateline any precipitation moves in during the early morning hours of Wednesday. Temperatures are forecast to be below freezing, so whatever does fall is going to be snow. We’re still nearly 48-hours from the event, but at this point it looks like this Alberta clipper system will track just to the north of the region. This should allow the heaviest of the snow to fall in central Wisconsin, leaving us a three to four hour window of falling snow. In terms of accumulations, most areas see less than 1/2″ of snow, with the area right along the Illinois and Wisconsin border approaching 1″.

Following the shot of midweek snow, temperatures take plummet. A potent high pressure system will help keep our winds at the surface to the north. This will help filter in a frigidly cold air mass by the second half of the work week. By Thursday and Friday, temperatures fall back into the lower 30s for highs. For anyone who's counting that's about 15 to 20° below average. Even low temperatures could fall as low as the teens by Friday morning.