By Radio Iowa Contributor

Forecasters say Iowa will ride another weather rollercoaster this week with high temperatures tomorrow climbing into the low to mid-90s, but then a cool front will arrive and knock highs by Thursday into the 60s, with lows in the 40s.

Meteorologist Darren Clabo, who moderated the regional climate update for the National Weather Service, predicts another warm-up will soon follow with lesser chances of rain.  “Above-average temperatures are really expected over the next one to two weeks, combined with below-average precipitation,” Clabo says. “Kind of expecting more or less an upper level ridge to stick around, which should bring us warmer-than-average and drier-than-average conditions, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing going into the harvest season, folks will be able to get out in the fields.”

He says that same pattern may continue right into October.  “There are some pretty strong signals that warmer-than-average conditions will persist over the central part of the United States combined with below-average precipitation,” Clabo says. “October is a drier month so below-average precipitation on a normally average to dryish month to begin with doesn’t bode well for filling stock ponds and allowing our stream flow to increase.”

Clabo says the climate outlooks show the La Nina pattern hanging on into winter, for the third year in a row, which -could- mean a warmer-than-normal winter ahead for Iowa.