Near Record Start to September

A rainy Friday wrapped up a very wet work week here in the Stateline that has put September 2020 in the record books.

With only 7.37 inches of rainfall between June 1^st and August 31^st, 2020 gave Rockford the ninth driest meteorological summer on record. This wouldn’t have been possible had the city not received a mere 0.57 inches of rainfall for the entire month of August having recorded only three days of measurable precipitation. This was the second driest August Rockford had ever recorded.

September, however, began on the opposite foot with rainfall recorded on each of the first two days and on seven of the first ten days of the month, four of which featured daily totals of over a half of an inch. It’s rained in Rockford every day this past week starting on Sunday the 6^th and continuing through Friday the 11^th with rain on Saturday being a near certainty. The last time Rockford saw seven consecutive days of measurable rainfall was May 24-30 of 2019. Over the first ten days of September, Rockford received a total of 5.32 inches of rainfall. The only other time on occurrence in which Rockford received more than five inches of rainfall over the first ten days of September was back in 1941 when the city received 6.85 inches of rain between September 1^st and 10^th. As of 9:00 PM CDT on Friday, the Rockford airport had received an additional 0.31 inches of rain for the day which means Rockford will end with a month-to-date total of at least 5.63 inches through the 11^th. This is 9.88x the amount of rain that the city received over the entire month of August.

Upwards of a half of an inch of rain is anticipated to fall between Friday evening and late Saturday evening. Following Saturday evening, a strong system of high pressure moves in which should keep the Stateline dry for the latter half of the weekend and into the middle of the upcoming week. Temperatures should also be back on the warm side of normal for at least a couple of days throughout the week.