Monday 9/3 Update

Happy Labor Day everyone!  Hopefully the overcast skies and scattered showers haven't dampened your plans too badly.  After enjoying an extended Labor Day weekend (with a little interruption from severe weather Saturday night), it's time for a post-Isaac blog update. With all of the Issac-related maps and charts posted last week, I'm going to keep this one pretty short and sweet.

With things wrapping up with Isaac, I am pleased with the forecast we went with, and how things turned out.  You'll remember we finally settled with a rainfall forecast of 1-2" across KY & TN, 2-4" across IL & MO, with locally higher totals near stronger storms.  Here are the rainfall totals I was able to come up with across the area for this event:

NWS totals:
Poplar Bluff: 6.40"
Mt. Vernon: 5.88"
Carbondale: 4.98"
Providence:  2.64"
Cape Girardeau: 2.42"
Paducah: 2.29"
Farmington: 1.88"
Hopkinsville (Ft. Campbell): 1.37"
Dyersburg: 0.47"

KY Mesonet totals:
Morganfield:  3.19"
Marion: 2.43"
Draffenville: 2.41"
Mayfield: 1.71"
Hickman: 1.63"
Earlington: 1.42"
Murray: 1.21"
Princeton: 1.14"
Cadiz:  1.12"

Isaac will be slowly moving east and fizzling away tomorrow, which means sunshine will return.  With that sunshine, along with lots of tropical moisture left behind, it should get quite steamy.  Highs will run in the upper 80's to lower 90's, but we could see some triple-digit heat index values, especially in SEMO & TN.

A fairly weak mid-level shortwave moves in on Wednesday, possibly leading to a few showers and thunderstorms....although it doesn't look to be a very potent system.

 By Friday morning, we'll have a frontal boundary draped across the area, with a surface low developing across the Central Plains.  That low will move northeast along the front, leading to a good chance of showers and storms Friday and Saturday.  Could be a couple of strong storms Friday afternoon/evening, depending on how much sunshine/instability we have. 

Models are split with what happens to this system in the Sunday/Monday time frame.  The GFS model slides it on to our east pretty quickly, bringing in dry air and sunshine....while the European model develops this into a closed low, keeping considerable cloud cover across the region.  Regardless, some cooler air will arrive by Saturday, with highs possibly dropping as low as the mid/upper 70's, while lows look to be headed toward the mid/upper 50's.  More details on all of this tomorrow.