Justin Thompson-Gee

Wisconsin dealt with waves of wildfire smoke and bad air quality over the weekend. Saturday morning was ok to be outside but that next round of smoke returning Saturday evening and stayed with us for most of Sunday. An air quality alert remains in effect for all of Wisconsin until Noon on Monday.

We stayed away from the severe storms on Monday. At one point we had Tornado Watches both to our north and to our southwest but Iowa and central/northern Wisconsin took the brunt of the severe weather. Parts of central Wisconsin were under seven different tornado warnings Monday evening.

After a cool Wednesday with highs staying in the low to middle 70s, we will start to see the temperatures increase the rest of the week. Highs on Thursday reach the upper 70s then Friday is close to average in the low 80s. Saturday is when we start to feel the warmth in the middle 80s with 90 degrees possible both Sunday and Monday.

We've enjoyed a couple of days this week with cooler temps and low humidity, but that will change as we head into the weekend. We still have one more below average day to enjoy with highs on Friday staying in the upper 70s then we start to feel the warmth on Saturday in the 80s and it gets hot by Sunday and Monday in the low 90s and still very warm next Tuesday.

The steamy humidity that rolled in for this past weekend and really got sticky on Sunday will stick around for Monday. Dew points are expected to stay in the upper 70s most of the day. The high dew points will add energy for some strong to severe storms later in the morning hours and again in the afternoon and evening. But, the sticky air is also causing some more immediate concerns with a Dense Fog Advisory issued until 8 AM Monday morning for our southern half of counties.

Monday was quite the powerful weather day across the state of Wisconsin. A cluster of storms moved in from the arrowhead of Minnesota through Rhinelander and dived south towards the Appleton/Menasha area where the National Weather Service has confirmed at least EF-2 damage and likely stronger. That storm is also responsible for hail the size of softballs and grapefruit which could be a new state record for hail. The storm continued through southeast Wisconsin into northern Illinois.

The week started stormy with severe weather rolling through the eastern half of Wisconsin. The Appleton/Menasha area saw a strong tornado around the midday hours Thursday. No other tornadoes have been reported from Monday. The tornado started in Appleton at 11:56 AM then strengthened to EF-3 strength with 140 mph peak winds in Menasha before dissipating over Lake Winnebago around 12:22 PM. The tornado was on the ground for 26 minutes and covered a distance of 12.1 miles. At its widest point, the tornado was just under a mile wide and was completely wrapped in rain. Incredibly, zero deaths and no major injuries have been reported.

Until the severe storms arrived on Monday, it was a very, very dry July. Going into the severe weather and heavy rain we were on track to be the driest July on record. Then we picked up a record daily rainfall of 1.75" which pushed our July rain total to 1.91". Despite that soaking rain we are still over an inch below-average on rain for the month of July. By the end of Friday, the last day of July, average rain for the month is at 3.40" so we will need almost exactly 1.50" of rain before midnight to get to average.

The last day of July and the first day of August were very wet. Our soaking rain definitely came to fruition with most of southeast Wisconsin picking up between 2-5" of rainfall. Some of our northern counties didn't quite hit that 2" mark but still saw a good soaking 1.50".

It has been a wet start to August after a wet end to July. Milwaukee picked up almost 2" of rain on the first day on August on Saturday and another round of heavy rain looks possible Tuesday night. Some showers or storms are possible as early as the mid-afternoon hours of Tuesday with better chances for rain Tuesday evening through Wednesday morning.