It will not be a "drought buster" or even a "drought denter" for that matter, but at least it is going to rain late this week in the western Corn Belt...something that has not been seen in significant quantities in that area for a very long time.

The storm system that will bring those rains will first work its way through the southern Plains for late in the work-week through a part of Saturday, and looks to bring a lot of the hard-red winter wheat belt some welcome 0.50-1.50 inch rain amounts. Much of the area of the Corn Belt west of the Mississippi River will be in rain by early on Saturday, and there will be rain chances in the Midwest through the end of the weekend.

Most anyone in the Midwest can see a half inch of rain for the period in question, with Kansas, Missouri, and a significant part of Iowa likely being the favored areas for rains that eventually total over an inch.

I wish I could say that this late-week rain is the start of an overall wet pattern for the very dry areas of the western Corn Belt, but there is no evidence to suggest that is the case. What a cold weekend it was across the Nation's midsection! No more was that the case than in the southern Plains, where significant parts of that area had high temperatures more than 25 degrees below normal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Goodland had high temperatures that never got out of the 30s for both Friday and Saturday.

Temperatures got to 32 degrees for low temperatures at Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Wichita Falls; probably the earliest freeze ever recorded for those locations. Just about everyone in the Midwest had at least some frost over the past three mornings and the bulk of the region got to 32 or lower (a place like Spencer was down to as low as 13 on Sunday morning).

Temperatures for this work-week in the Nation's midsection will be up and down, but in the end will average a solid distance below normal. Milder temperatures are forecast though for next week.

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