Dry statewide today. Clouds will be more frequent down near the Ohio River, but we should be rain free in all areas of the state today.
Rain is back tomorrow, starting as scattered shower action in east central and southeast Indiana in the morning and then spreading north and west from there. The only part of the state that likely stays dry tomorrow will be far NW Indiana, and perhaps west central, near the Illinois line. The rest of the state can see rains from a few hundredths to half an inch or better. Rain chances continue Saturday, Sunday and the first half of Monday. The best way to look at this period is to say that on any given day we see rain coverage at 50-60%, but for the 3 and a half day period combined, we can see .25”- 1.5” rains over 90% of the state. IF we can get thunderstorms to develop on Sunday (more likely in Ohio than here), that would raise the possibility of some isolated higher rain totals. Still, rain is a fairly safe bet at least couple of times from Friday to Monday.
Tuesday will be mostly dry with dominant sunshine. We actually start the drying late Monday and keep it going into early Wednesday. It probably will not be long enough to do anything with it, though. Rain and thunderstorms are back with our next front by midday Wednesday, the 23rd. and the rains look to linger through the 24th. We will leave rain totals alone at .1”-.8” over the state, with coverage still at 70% of the entire state.
Next Friday, the 25th, we should start to dry down some as high pressure pushes in from the northwest. This will take temps back closer to or even a degree or two below normal for the extended 11-16 day window. However, we still see temps over the next 10 days mostly normal to above normal. Cumulative precipitation totals are shown below. We do see some concern this morning about another system in the heart of the Memorial Day holiday weekend. This system is just showing up on some models, so we are not jumping all over it yet, since it is a strong change from our previous dry outlook. Track is still uncertain, and we feel it could stay farther south. Still, it is something to watch, and we may have to extend our active pattern through the end of the month, if this system is able to hang around or even grow.