"Blocking Weather Pattern" Keeping Illinois Dry

BY JIM TAYLOR, FarmWeekNow.com

It’s the same question again this week in Illinois: When is it going to rain?

“I certainly don’t see any significant chance of any significant rain for the time being,” Freese-Notis Weather Meteorologist Dan Hicks said during a Tuesday conversation with RFD Radio. “We’re kind of locked in a weather pattern where the greatest rainfall is occurring in the Plains and parts of the southern U.S.”

May rainfall has been below normal over a large part of the Midwest, including much of Illinois. Some of the drier pockets are showing 30% of normal May rainfall.

“Soils have been gradually drying throughout the month of May,” he said. “Looking at the soil profile down to 4 or 5 feet, a lot of places are running an inch or two below normal for that profile.”

The need for rain is increasing and is “becoming a little more critical,” especially in those areas where May amounts were minimal.

Rain continues to all in the Plains, but those systems have not made their way to Illinois.

“We’ve got kind of a blocking weather pattern,” Hicks said. “The jet stream was blocked last week with that upper level high over the Great Lakes and northern Midwest and an upper-level low in the southern U.S.”

And the progression eastward stopped resulting in the rain in the Plains and southern U.S.

“That upper level high actually redevelops this week and expands over the north central and northeastern part of the country, and that steers systems away from the Midwest," said Hicks.