Drought Monitor

We have a pleasant 60° this morning with partly cloudy skies.  Otsego had .08 of an inch of rain yesterday.  A storm line formed along the front passing through just after 1800 (6 pm, sorry I am used to using military time).  The largest amount I have seen so far through CoCoRaHS is 1.54 inches in Buchanan, west of Niles.  Most amounts were a trace to a tenth of an inch.  It is still early so all the reports are not in yet.  We don’t have a reporting station in Allegan where I know it rain quite hard before I left work.  All in all it was an impressive system on radar – if you have reports you would like to share please do so.

We are still dry over most of the state and have a 33% chance of drier and warmer than normal conditions through the 12th.  This is figured using daily mean temperatures with figures in both high and lows.  Average highs for Grand Rapids are around 81° and low 61° for early August.  By September we will be at 73/53.  Below is the latest from the U.S. Drought monitor for both the CONUS and Michigan.  You can click on them to enlarge.  I am not seeing much improvement over the next week as we have no tropical storms in the Atlantic and the dust still blowing off the Sahara in Africa.  We have Hector in the eastern Pacific well off the coast of Mexico which is expected to become a major hurricane as it slowly moves towards Hawaii.

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We have a hot and humid weekend in store after a pleasant seasonal day today.  We will have Saturday and Sunday in the upper 80s with dew points near 60.  Our next chance of wide spread rain will come on Monday then more seasonal temperature for next week.  The forecast graphic below should be for your location as I have coded the feature to figure your GPS wherever you are.