Blog Article
Best Weather Today: Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest
Green Bay, Rockford, and Medford score Beautiful today while the Northeast floods. Here's where the good weather is and how the week shapes up.
Monday's Beautiful Window: The Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest Deliver While the East Gets Soaked
Yesterday was the best day of the week, and we said so. Today is still good — just not for everybody.
The Nice Weather Outlook has today at Beautiful across a solid chunk of the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes, and Pacific Northwest, with a zone-average score of 89.3 out of 100. That's close to the top of what Monday can realistically deliver. Meanwhile, the Northeast is dealing with a Moderate Risk for excessive rainfall from coastal New Jersey up through southeast Massachusetts, and dangerous heat is still lurking across the Southeast. The country is split pretty cleanly in two right now, and the good half is worth knowing about.
Where Today Earns Beautiful
The headline cities today are Green Bay, WI and Rockford, IL, both scoring 92.0 in the Beautiful category. Oshkosh, WI and Medford, OR are right there with them at 92.0 as well. These aren't borderline scores — the zone is posting a precipitation sub-score of 99.6/100 and cloud cover averaging just 5%. That's about as blue a sky as July gives you.
What does that actually feel like? Green Bay wakes up to a high near 72°F with dewpoints in the upper 50s and winds barely cracking 12 mph. Rockford and the Rockford-area communities — Belvidere, Loves Park, Machesney Park — all sit in similar territory. This is the kind of day where you can eat lunch outside without checking your phone every 10 minutes for radar. A Brewers game in Milwaukee today (Milwaukee at St. Louis is an away game, but the weather at home is lovely regardless) would be a patio kind of afternoon.
Out west, Medford, OR is the standout. High of 92°F with a dewpoint of just 51°F and 0% cloud cover. That combination — warm, bone dry, and clear — is what makes southern Oregon summers so compelling. UV sits at 8.1, so sunscreen is a real need if you're hiking the Rogue River corridor or spending time at Crater Lake. But the air quality is clean and the sky is open.
Seattle scores 82.0, which puts it at the Beautiful floor. A high near 75°F, dewpoints in the mid-50s, and only 3% cloud cover. One caveat worth noting: Seattle's AQI today is 63, which is the Moderate range. That's not dangerous for most people, but if you're sensitive to air quality — or planning a long trail run — it's worth being aware of.
For the Rogue Valley specifically, today is the best day of the entire seven-day stretch. Medford scores 92.0 today and carries the highest weekly mean score of any city in the country at 83.4 over the full seven days. If you're anywhere in that corridor from Roseburg down through Ashland, you've got good weather every day this week — though confidence fades a bit on days 6 and 7, as it always does at that range.
The East Is a Different Story
If you're reading this from somewhere along the I-95 corridor, today is not your day. The Weather Prediction Center has a Moderate Risk for excessive rainfall running from coastal New Jersey through the New York metro and into southeast Massachusetts. That's a level 3 out of 4. Training thunderstorms along a stationary front are the mechanism, and WPC is talking about 3 to 6 inch areal averages with local totals above 8 inches possible. This is a flash flood setup, not just a rainy afternoon.
The Southeast is hot and muggy. Dangerous heat is still a factor across portions of the South even as the heat footprint from last week's extreme event slowly contracts. None of that region makes the nice weather board today.
Looking Ahead: The West Gets Its Moment on Wednesday
Here's the interesting pivot in the forecast. Tuesday keeps the Great Lakes and northern New England at Beautiful, with Grand Rapids, MI scoring 92.0 and Presque Isle, ME running clean numbers (high of 81°F, dewpoint 58°F, winds barely 7 mph). Tuesday is a genuinely good day in those areas — the dewpoint sub-score hits 98.0/100 and precipitation probability is essentially zero.
Then on Wednesday, July 8th, the best weather in the country shifts to California and Oregon. San Jose hits 92.0 with a high of 80°F and a dewpoint of just 45°F — that's unusually dry and comfortable for the Bay Area in July. Santa Rosa scores 92.0. Eugene and Medford both stay in the Beautiful zone. The Salinas Valley, Davis, and Stockton all show up in the top 10 for Wednesday.
This is worth planning around if you're in Northern California or the Willamette Valley. Wednesday looks like a patio breakfast in San Jose, a morning hike in the hills above Eugene, or a long lunch in Napa Valley without fighting the heat. UV will be around 8.2 across that zone, so shade and sunscreen still matter, but the temperature and humidity numbers are legitimately excellent.
After Wednesday, the national picture gets less generous. Days 4 through 7 are capped at Nice as the maximum category, and the best scores drop to the 74-78 range out of 100. Heat stress starts affecting a growing fraction of the country — 8% of gridpoints on Thursday rising to 27% by Sunday. The Pacific Northwest and interior West hold on to Nice-level conditions through the weekend, but the eastern half of the country stays complicated with heat, humidity, and recurring storm chances tied to frontal boundaries.
For a full look at the seven-day picture, the Nice Weather outlook page has the maps and city rankings updated each morning.
One More Thing: The Rogue Valley Streak
The weekly rankings are dominated by southern Oregon and northern California this week, and it's worth pausing on that for a second. Medford, Roseburg, Ashland, Central Point, and a dozen other communities in that corridor are all averaging a 83.4 weekly mean score — every single day of the seven-day period lands at a nice weather threshold or better for most of them. That's not luck. That's a ridge keeping the moisture out and the skies clear. If you've been thinking about a road trip through the Cascades or a visit to Jacksonville, OR for the summer theater season, this is your window.
UV is the consistent caveat across the entire West this week. Values running between 7.8 and 8.7 mean unprotected skin can burn in under 15 minutes at midday. Reapply, wear a hat, and don't skip the sunscreen just because the air feels comfortable.