More warmth and sunshine this week

 Today was a very pleasant day with lots of sunshine and warmth. We made it into the 30s despite starting the day in single digits for the morning low temperature. A very large area of high pressure situated over Southern Illinois and Eastern Missouri helped to keep skies clear and winds fairly light. As that high pressure moved further East, winds picked up a little bit out of the Southwest here across the Stateline.

Those clear conditions will continue once again tonight, as we will see clear skies once again this evening. The good news with that, is that temperatures will not be nearly as cold as they were last night with all the colder conditions. Temperatures will only make it down to the low 20s and upper teens around here, with a lighter wind than last night.

Tomorrow, temperatures will rebound even further, getting up to the mid and even upper 30s. We will once again see very bright and sunny skies, and even less wind than there was today.

The next time we see much of anything as far as cloud cover is not until Monday. Most of those clouds will be upper level clouds, but we remain holding on to partly cloudy skies. Temperatures will even warm into the 40s.

The warmth and calm conditions will continue for a few more days beyond that, mainly due to the upper level pattern in the jet stream helping to support the high pressure off to the Northwest. This strong high pressure will help to keep storm systems mainly either North or South of the Midwest, dur to the split flow in the stream.

This is set to change near the end of next week, as the jet stream shifts and the high pressure erodes away. This will change the flow of the jet stream and therefore allowing any potential storm tracks to move through the Stateline. The pattern will shift to a more active one beginning next weekend.

Speaking of that active pattern, the Climate Prediction Center has identified the area as a more active one, predicting above average precipitation in the period between 6 and 10 days from now.

They are also predicting above average temperatures, so likely we will see some rainfall as opposed to snow.

But in the short term, the calm and quiet conditions continue. There is a very slight chance for precipitation on Thursday, the main pattern shift is not until next weekend.