Dry Weather... And We're Not Just Talking Dewpoints

We've been seeing a very dry period for a lot of us in southeastern South Dakota since the wet start to the month of May. If you saw us yesterday on KDLT you saw my graphic showing that we are about 3.5" below average as far as liquid precipitation is concerned... and we dug a little bit deeper into that. Don't confuse this with the abnormally low dewpoints Cody talked about in the post below this - those are just a reflection of the moisture in the air. They are impacted, however, by dry soil at the surface - which is likely part of why we haven't seen more severe weather so far this year.

While this map is not *quite* up to the minute (it's a rough estimate based on the lack of rain and the Regional Drought Monitor website at http://drought.unl.edu/DM/DM_highplains.htm), it does give us an idea of what we're working with. We need gulf air to give us high dewpoints and high humidity - but we also need moist surfaces to help fuel the moisture and in turn the storms that help us get out of a drought. As they say... when it rains, it pours.

There is quite a bit of rain, possibly, on the horizon. We are looking closely at a few different patches of rain that will likely make for a very cool and wet weekend. The largest portion would come around Saturday night, at least as of now.

Click on that image - but basically it is a timeline with "now" on the right, and the future on the left. I made a curve building up to the highest rain totals - and that is in the middle of the time period - Saturday night to Sunday.

We'll see - but if you have big weekend plans stay tuned the next couple of days!

~KDLT Meteorologist Aaron Shaffer