Finally, a decent forecast

It appears that our pattern of heavy rain and strong thunderstorms has finally ended. We're now enjoying a cooler, drier airmass. The 7-day forecast does include chances for rain Thursday night, Saturday morning, and Monday night, but these appear to be weak, Alberta clipper-type systems.

The projection for the next 5 days does show that Southeast Missouri could pick up a half-inch of rainfall, but this would be spread out over the three rain chances. Areas to the north (along the Mississippi River) and the east (Ohio River watershed) could see over an inch of rain, but that's fairly minor compared to what we have seen.

I should point out, however, that the rainfall projections for the last two weeks underestimated what we actually received by a factor of 2 or 3, so these forecasts should be taken with a grain -- nay, a truckload -- of salt.

I'm more worried about the longer-range computer models. The 6-10 day outlook (covering May 9-13) paints above-average rainfall over a wide area, including both the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

The one-month outlook for May also shows above-average precipitation, but over a much smaller area. May is typically a wet month to begin with, so any "above average" is not good.

During the last two weeks, the Cape Girardeau airport has measured 20.82 inches of rain. Some places to the south and west have seen even more, as shown in this radar estimate covering the last 14 days:

Let's just hope the Flood of 2011 is a once-in-a-lifetime event that isn't repeated anytime soon.