What's With The All The Rain? What About The Thunderstorms Tonight?

As I am writing this blog post, we are watching a cold front move through South Dakota. It'll be causing some thunderstorms and some that could produce smaller hail (we've seen reports of large hail near Mission Ridge at 1.25" so far)- but then it should fizzle out as the sun sets and the cold front runs into air that has already had its "fun." This is what we're seeing so far as far as radar estimated rainfall totals:

If you click on that image you'll get more detail, but in general the light green colors coincide with radar estimated rainfall totals around 0.5"-0.7", and the blues are closer to 0.2"-0.3". You can see quite a bit of rain has been falling - but we have some re-development farther toward the West right now...

Look at this radar image from just a few seconds ago, taken from the Aberdeen radar:

Those are the thunderstorms we speak of - and they are forming right along the line of the cold front, so once the line passes you should be in the clear if you find yourself under one of those thunderstorms right now...

So... what has been causing all of this wet weather? Well, you've heard us mention the jetstream before. That is the region of high winds in the upper levels of the atmosphere that divides colder air to the North from warmer air to the South. It helps create rising air, which in turn helps create clouds & potentially rain. Why do we mention it? Well, look at this image below:
Do you see all of those yellows and pinks on the map? Those indicate regions of higher wind about 70% of the way to the top of the atmosphere. That is the jetstream - and it is right over us! Given what we just mentioned about the jetstream and rain and clouds - you are probably getting the idea! We're hoping to shift the jetstream - but for now no big shifts are in the works... stay tuned!

~KDLT Meteorologist Aaron Shaffer