It has been a stretch of warm days lately, as Rockford reached the upper 60s both yesterday and today. However, this was not the normal across the Midwest and Great Lakes area. Many spots both East and West of Illinois saw highs much closer to the 50s. This is because of a pair of weather systems on either side of us locally, keeping temperatures cooler there.

While we are seeing clear skies tonight, temperatures will be slower to fall, only reaching the low 40s for the overnight low. Clouds begin to roll in, but we should remain dry through about 7/8AM.

That time is when the cold front comes to pass through, bringing rain showers with it early tomorrow morning. We will see scattered showers the rest of the day, but the bulk of the rain will be early in the day.

After the front passes, we will be much cooler for the afternoon. Highs only reach the mid 50s as we will see much more cloud cover and even a few scattered showers after the initial line early in the morning. Winds could gust to around 25-30 mph during the afternoon as well.

Rain continues to spin around our low-pressure system through the weekend, with more widespread rain coming Sunday. If temperatures remain a bit on the cooler side, we could see a few snowflakes trying to mix in across our Northern area, mainly late Sunday going into Monday morning.

This upper-level low pressure continues to spin around the Great Lakes region through the early week, but once it clears out to the East, we will start to see slowly warming temperatures for the middle and end of the week ahead.

The long-term outlook from the Climate Prediction Center is favoring slightly below normal temperatures, but much higher probabilities of lower-than-normal precipitation between May 4th-8th.

After a cool and rainy weekend, temperatures slowly climb back into the 60s by the end of the week. A few more rain chances come around then as well.