How Much More Rain For Halloween

It's raining! It's been a good, steady rain, too. This slow, prolonged rain is easier for the parched ground to soak up than getting the same amount of rain all at once. The map below shows rain totals so far through Sunday evening, but rain is still falling in our communities. To all of you asking if we are out of the drought yet, it's very unlikely this amount of rain could bring us totally out of the drought. It will certainly help and prevent the drought from getting worse this week; we will get an update from the U.S. Drought Monitor Thursday morning that *will* take all of this rain into consideration.

Now back to forecast: as the center of this system (the big red L) moves north and away from us, the rain will get lighter. This is what we call "wrap-around" moisture on the back side of a low pressure center.

By Monday morning you will notice the rain isn't as heavy or as consistent. There will be more breaks in the rain Monday than what we saw Sunday, but the clouds aren't going anywhere.

Even when it's not raining Monday, the air will still feel damp. With temperatures climbing into the middle and upper 60s in many spots, it won't feel warm Monday.

As you get the kids ready to trick-or-treat or head out to the nearby fall festival, a rain jacket or sweatshirt will be a good idea. We can't promise that our area will be totally dry by that time of evening, but there won't be much rain left. The image below is a good idea of how many showers we still expect to see by that time of night. Use this to get an idea of what kind of rain is possible, but don't focus so much on the exact location of the rain at this specific hour. Weather modeling isn't that good ;)

By Tuesday morning we do dry out, and the clouds will break apart through the afternoon.

Since the rain will be lighter and more isolated Monday, we won't stack up as much rain as we did Sunday. Most areas will pick up somewhere close to an additional one-tenth of an inch of rain, maybe two-tenths if you're lucky.