Across the Corn Belt, outside of clouds and showers in the lower Ohio Valley, sunny skies are promoting fieldwork and summer crop emergence. Recent rainfall has been highly variable, with 2-week totals ranging from a trace to more than 6 inches. Overall, conditions are favorable, but pockets of dryness persist in the central Corn Belt.
On the Plains, blistering heat in southern portions of the region contrasts with chilly, wet conditions on the northern Plains. One more day of triple-digit heat is expected again Friday on the southern High Plains, with 90's lingering as far north as South Dakota. Meanwhile, a strong cold front is producing locally heavy showers on the northern Plains, where Friday’s high temperatures will average up to 10° below normal.
In the South, saturated soils in the east contrast with increasingly dry conditions over the western Gulf Coast Region. Southeastern producers are in need of drier weather for fieldwork, while soils have become unfavorably dry from southern Texas into the western Delta.
In the West, cool but sunny weather is favoring Northwestern winter wheat development as well as seasonal fieldwork across the rest of the region. However, a few showers linger over the northern Rockies.
A strong cold front will accelerate east, producing locally heavy showers and thunderstorms from Plains southeastward into the Corn Belt. Behind the front, cooler air will provide a brief respite from heat, though hot weather will return by early next week. A weaker cold front will produce showers across the northeastern quarter of the nation, while a disturbance along the tail end of the front — currently in the Tennessee Valley —is expected to bring showers to the interior Southeast before stalling along the central Atlantic Coast over the weekend. This stalled system has the potential to produce heavy rain over the Mid-Atlantic into early next week before being swept offshore. Out West, heat will continue to build, spilling east onto the Plains by early next week. However, an upper-air disturbance will trigger showers and thunderstorms in eastern portions of the Four Corners Region.
Looking ahead, the 6- to 10-day outlook calls for above-normal temperatures over much of the central and western U.S., with cooler-than-normal conditions confined to the East Coast States. Meanwhile, below-normal rainfall is expected over much of the U.S. save for pockets of wetter-than-normal weather in the Upper Midwest and lower Four Corners.