Temperatures & Humidity Levels Spike, Severe Potential Arrives Overnight

Heating Right Back Up:

Were you able to head outdoors Monday, Tuesday or even yesterday? I mean my goodness, mother nature really gave us a beautiful stretch of weather featuring an abundance of sunshine and pleasant humidity levels. As we now roll into our Thursday, unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Today is going to be what we call a "day of transition" as warmer winds will help pull in warmer temperatures and higher dew points. Expect highs to jump from the mid-80s Wednesday to the low-90s this afternoon, the air feeling a bit more muggy as the day carries on. The entirety of Thursday looks to feature partly sunny skies and plenty of dry time with increasing clouds later in the evening. Most of the showers and storms in the forecast will hold off until after sunsets, with chances becoming more widespread by the midnight hour. 

Severe Potential Overnight:

The heat and higher humidity levels throughout the day today will help set up an atmosphere potentially prime for severe weather.Guidance continues to show a cluster of showers and thunderstorms originating ahead of a surging cold front in eastern Iowa, racing southeast into our neck of the woods overnight. The Storm Prediction Center has upgraded areas across northcentral Iowa, southwest Wisconsin and extreme northwest Illinois to an enhanced risk, level 3 of 5, for severe weather. The rest of the Stateline in this update remains in a slight risk, level 2 of 5, for severe weather.

Since we'll still have a good amount of instability in the atmosphere overnight, and strong winds in the low-levels, damaging winds and heavy rainfall continue to be the main hazards. With how dry the ground is at the current moment, it won't take much for flash flooding to take place. But what's important is the fact that you are weather ready. Before you head to bed this evening, please make sure to have multiple ways to get watches and warnings if any are issued. Some hit-or-miss storms will continue through early Friday morning, but should come to an end by mid-morning. 

Old Settler's Day Forecast:

Once storms clear the area, the sunshine returns making for a hot and muggy end to the work week. Highs will once again top out in the low 90s before cooling down by a few degrees over the upcoming weekend. For those who plan to attend the Old Settlers Days festival, the weather looks to cooperate for much of the event. Tomorrow's cold front will help cool temperatures down by a couple of degrees for Saturday and Sunday. Sunday in fact may feature a few more clouds than Saturday as our next cold front approaches from the northwest. The best part about the cold front that's expected to pass through late Sunday into Monday is that it'll help cool highs into the upper 70s by Tuesday.