Coolest July 4th in 11 Years Gives Way to A Steambath & Deluge!

We had one of our nicest July 4th weekends in several years. It is known as one of our stormiest holidays of the entire year when manmade fireworks are usually outdone by nature's fireworks. But not this year. A cool, stabilizing air mass arrived from Canada on the 4th helping to push all of the heat and humidity away. Now interestingly enough we did have a few light sprinkles reported just south of Frankfort just after 9 p.m. but they quickly dissipated. Nature ALWAYS makes things interesting. One interesting note is that we had our coolest July 4th since 1997 with a high temperature of only 76 degrees. If you thought that was impressive, northern Quebec had its first July snowflakes in more than ten years.

As we discussed on the blog on Friday, it takes a lot of things to go just right to keep thunderstorms away on the 4th here in the Lafayette viewing area and in this case if it was snow in Quebec that helped give the cooler air mass a little more push southward so be it! Everything is related in the world of weather that is for sure. I know I had a great weekend with my family. One of the many highlights included bowling. My daughters absolutely loved bowling. They take after their Mom and Dad. The very first date I went on with Julie was at the bowling alley so it is in their blood. We bowled and bowled and bowled, count them 6 games. The great part is that you are guaranteed a few strikes when you bowl that much. Even Lauren, our 3 year old had a strike. I didn't get a turkey, but came close a couple times. The great part was just spending good time together.

Now this morning nature had a few of its on strikes. Lightning strikes that is. We didn't have any weather warnings but did have some very impressive rainfall totals. Delphi averages 4 inches of rain the entire month of July. But Wendy had over 3 inches of rain or about 3 weeks worth of rain in about 3 hours. Kandy in Chalmers wasn't far behind with about 2.4 inches. The gully washer also hit Mary Anne in Remington with 2.3 inches. The farther south and east you went the less rain. Notice here at WLFI in West Lafayette we had .85". Here are more totals for you below.

Unfortunately some areas like Monon and Kokomo had less than .20" of an inch. In fact Gene and Charlotte Austin in Monon were out watering their plants again today. They were also missed with last week's rain. This is certainly the time of year where some areas could have flooding while other areas need to water their plants and this was a good example.

We have no major fronts or storm systems this time of year as our jet stream lifts to the north and what happens is we have thunderstorms that pop up due to heat and humidity. These convective storms sometimes are less than a couple miles in diameter playing havoc with rainfall forecasts.

Last night we actually had a complex of thunderstorms form. The problem this time of year is that even if you get a big area of several thunderstorms they tend to die out toward morning as you lose the heating and areas that are farther downstream miss out on the rain. In this case it would be Kokomo and area farther north near Monon. But I do think all of us will have a good chance of seeing more heavy rain and maybe even some stronger storms. Make sure to tune in to find out why and I will keep you updated as always here on the blog.