Warming trend with periods of steady rain next week

 A warmer and wetter pattern change is on the way for much of next week. The upper level flow will turn to come out of the Southwest, pushing a much warmer and moisture-filled air mass our direction. The most abundant moisture begins to set in Monday night into Tuesday, when our potential for steady rain showers will begin. The map below shows our "precipitable water" values, which is a measure of how much water vapor there is in a vertical column of air. When PW values reach an inch or higher, that indicates some very rich moisture, especially for early March standards.

Even meager forcing will be able to shake out some of that moisture in the form of scattered rain showers beginning Monday night or Tuesday morning. With a little bit of cold air still in place, there is a low-end chance for some of this precipitation early Tuesday to fall in the form of light wintry mix. But the bulk of it will come down as rain with temperatures steadily climbing at the surface and in the low/mid levels of the atmosphere. Surface temperatures will reach the upper 40s to 50s starting Wednesday.

The coverage of rain shown above for Tuesday afternoon is fairly scattered, with around 40-60% of the area seeing rain at any given time. We will see similar coverage of rain continue into the middle of the week, including Wednesday and Thursday. There will still be many dry hours through the week, but the main window for steady rain in the near-term looks to be Monday night into Tuesday. Two more systems will pass later in the week, with lesser confidence on timing between Wednesday-Thursday then Friday-Saturday.

Several of these systems could bring some broad soaking rainfalls over the Midwest and Ohio River Valley through the course of the week. Heaviest rain looks to be displaced mainly across Missouri into Central and Southern Illinois/Indiana, with some locations possibly seeing 2-4" of rain next week! Locally in Northern Illinois, projections give us around a 50/50 chance to see around an inch through the course of the week.