Weather
Much cooler air on the move across the northern, central Plains; mild & dry across the Corn Belt
Across the Corn Belt, cooler air and scattered showers trail a cold front stretching from Wisconsin to Nebraska. Across the remainder of the Midwest, warm, sunny weather is ideal for corn and soybean maturation.
On the Plains, showery, significantly cooler air has overspread the northwestern half of the region, where Friday’s high temperatures will remain mostly at or below 70°F. This follows recent extreme heat; September temperature records were tied or broken in locations such as Glasgow, Montana (106°F on the 7th) and Valentine, Nebraska (106°F on the 8th). Meanwhile, heat lingers across much of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, favoring fieldwork and summer crop maturation.
In the South, showery weather is expanding across areas east of the Mississippi Delta. Rain has become heavy in parts of northern and western Florida, where flooding is a threat. Heavy rain is also falling in portions of coastal South Carolina. Elsewhere, including the western Gulf Coast region, warm, dry weather favors rice harvesting and other fieldwork.
In the West, lingering extreme heat is mostly limited to California and western Oregon. Friday’s high temperatures will still reach 110°F as far north as California’s Sacramento Valley. In contrast, markedly cooler air has overspread the eastern slopes of the northern Rockies, where this Friday morning’s temperatures locally fell below 40°F. Meanwhile, smoke from approximately six dozen wildfires in California and the Northwest is causing local degradations in air quality. Finally, rain associated with Tropical Storm Kay is spreading into southern sections of California and Arizona.
