Moving Along

The first half of June came and went with blazing heat and hardly a drop of rain. Before summer started we saw summer like heat with record high temperatures set not only in the Carolinas, but up and down the East Coast. A stalled out weather pattern was responsible for our hot and dry weather. A large area of high pressure stalled over the Southeast to start June, and did not really budge until last week.

While it was hot here, and the dry weather lead to some wildfires, this stalled out weather pattern was also responsible for the flooding in the Midwest. While we were baking under the sun, tremendous amounts of rain fell in the Midwest. The area of high pressure stalled over the Southeast blocked the area of low pressure that was stalled over the Midwest from moving east. That lead to night after night of severe thunderstorms and flooding rain. The hardest hit area was in eastern Iowa, where over a foot of rain fell in 10 days and many rivers exceeded the record crests from the great flood of 1993.

Our stubborn high finally broke down. Our temperatures have returned to normal, and we are getting some rain. With the stalled high gone, the weather pattern is moving once again, so the Midwest rain has shifted east. Even though the worst of the rain is over, the high river crests are moving down the Mississippi. The flood reached St. Louis, and will continue to move south over the next few weeks.

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