Blog Article
Nice Weather Outlook: The Best Days Move Coast to Coast This Week
Track this week's shifting Nice Weather map from the Great Lakes and Dakotas to the Minnesota State Fair, then out to California's long-running streak by the weekend.
This Week's Nice Weather Map Is Basically on a Road Trip
Most weeks, the nice weather sits still for a few days before it moves. This week it barely stops walking. Tuesday's best air is over the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley. Wednesday it's the Dakotas. Thursday it's Omaha and Fargo and the Twin Cities, right as the gates open at the Minnesota State Fair. Then, as humidity and storm chances build east of the Rockies for the back half of the week, the map quietly hands the trophy to California, which has been running its own streak in the background the whole time. Here's how to actually use it.
Today: The Great Lakes and Ohio Valley Take the Top Spot, With an Asterisk
Today's best zone runs from the Mid-Atlantic through the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley into the northern Plains and the Colorado Plateau, scoring 89.9 out of 100, about as close to maxed out on rain, wind, and dewpoint as this time of year gets. Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Allentown, and Winslow, Arizona all individually hit 92.0. Manhattan, Chattanooga, Bridgeport, Trenton, and Scranton are right behind in the low-to-mid 80s. Winslow's case is a fun one: a 91-degree high that still scores great because the dewpoint is a bone-dry 46.
The catch, and it's the whole story of this Tuesday, is smoke. The best zone's individual sub-scores are basically flawless, but a peak AirNow reading of 53 keeps it capped below the top tier the raw weather alone would support. Seattle, Chicago, and El Paso all have decent temperature and humidity profiles today that get dragged down into Fair and Decent territory purely by wildfire haze and elevated AQI readings, not by heat or rain. If you're in one of those cities and the sky looks hazy despite a nice-looking forecast, that's why.
Wednesday: The Dakotas Have the Best Day Anyone Gets
Wednesday's best weather anywhere in the country sits over western and central North Dakota and South Dakota. Rapid City (92.0), Bismarck (91.9), and Minot (91.9) anchor a zone scoring 89.0, with highs near 81, dewpoints near 50, and just a 1% rain chance. It's about as clean a late-August day as the atmosphere hands out.
Meanwhile Portland, Tacoma, Salem, and Eugene, Oregon all post genuinely strong numbers of their own Wednesday, but they're stuck in the Nice tier instead of climbing higher because of the same air-quality ceiling hitting the Dakotas, just worse. Tacoma's effective AQI runs into the 80s, Portland into the 70s, both above the threshold the next tier up requires, even though every one of their raw weather sub-scores clears 90. Manchester, New Hampshire, with a clean AQI in the 30s, would technically qualify for the higher tier on its own merits.
Thursday: The Upper Midwest, Right on Cue for the Fair
Thursday is where this week gets genuinely useful for planning. The Minnesota State Fair opens in Falcon Heights, and it lands smack in the middle of a Beautiful-rated zone stretching from the central High Plains into the Upper Midwest, a zone that includes Minneapolis itself. Omaha, Lincoln, Madison, Des Moines, Sioux Falls, and Fargo all individually score 92.0, with highs in the mid-80s, dewpoints around 55, essentially zero rain chance, and just 9% cloud cover. Kansas City and Chicago sit a notch below at Nice, still very good, mostly held back by slightly breezier wind than the top tier.
Milwaukee is a nice reminder that even a great zone has soft spots: it's inside the Beautiful footprint by geography, but a breezier 16 mph wind on the lakefront pulls its individual score down to 72. If you're headed to the fair or anywhere in the Twin Cities-Omaha-Fargo triangle Thursday, this is close to the best air quality and comfort setup you'll find all week.
Friday Through Sunday: The Ceiling Drops, and California Takes Back the Wheel
Starting Friday, every zone in the country is mathematically capped at Nice by the forecast-day rules that far out, so the story shifts from "who hits the top score" to "who holds the ceiling longest." Friday and Saturday, that best-available Nice weather spreads from the upper Midwest through the Pacific Northwest into the Mid-South. Chicago, Portland, Columbus, Memphis, Pittsburgh, and Santa Rosa all land at or near 82.0.
But watch the drift. As a West Coast trough weakens and humidity and shower coverage build east of the Rockies through the weekend, that comfortable footprint contracts and slides west. By Sunday and Monday, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Fresno, Bakersfield, Riverside, and Stockton are running the show, all around 72 to 82. That's not a surprise to California, honestly. Sacramento, Oakland, Stockton, Berkeley, and a long list of Central Valley and Bay Area cities are already sitting on live 78-day streaks of Nice-or-better weather as of today, one of the longest active runs in the country. The rest of the map is just catching back up to where California's been all summer.
Worth noting: our southwestern Oregon favorites around Grants Pass and Roseburg, which we highlighted running a full seven-day Nice-to-Beautiful streak earlier this week, are still very much in the mix too. They just aren't the only story this time.
The Caveats Worth Knowing
A few things to keep in your back pocket. Smoke and AQI, not heat or rain, are the single biggest thing keeping this week's best zones from scoring even higher, especially in the Pacific Northwest and Southern California. There's a Storm Prediction Center Slight Risk for severe storms across the central Plains and upper Mississippi Valley today, with damaging gusts and large hail possible around Amarillo and Duluth, and a similar setup shifts toward the central High Plains and western Great Lakes Wednesday. And farther south, WPC and CPC both flag a long-duration, near-record heat pattern locked over the Southwest into the south-central U.S. that isn't going anywhere through early September, so if your travel plans run through Phoenix, El Paso, or the southern Plains, plan around the heat, not the nice weather map.
For the day-by-day breakdown with maps, check the Nice Weather outlook page, especially if your weekend plans could bend toward Minneapolis on Thursday or the California coast by Sunday.