Blog Article
Perfect Score Hits Iowa Friday as Nice Weather Rolls East
Tucson leads today's Beautiful weather, but Friday brings a rare true Perfect score to Sioux City, Iowa before the high slides into the Great Lakes Saturday.
The Nice Weather Takes a Road Trip: Desert Southwest Today, a Real Perfect Score Hits Iowa Friday
Some weeks the nice weather sits still. This one is on the move, and it's worth tracking because the payoff gets better as it goes.
Today it's the Central Rockies and Desert Southwest doing the heavy lifting. Tucson, St. George, Grand Junction, Farmington, and Sierra Vista are all sitting in Beautiful territory as a building high pressure ridge finishes clearing out the last of this week's clouds. Highs run near 74 degrees, dewpoints are down around 50, cloud cover is basically nonexistent at 6 percent, and the air is clean enough to see for miles. If you've got a patio breakfast, a trailhead, or a bike ride on the books in that corridor today, this is about as good as the Southwest gets this time of year.
There's one small asterisk. Tucson's UV index clocks in at 7.1, just over the strict threshold that would've let it climb into the very top category, so sun protection still matters even on a cool-feeling fall afternoon. Air quality across the zone is fine but not flawless either, which is the only reason this ridge tops out at Beautiful instead of the theoretical ceiling.
Friday Is the Day to Watch
Here's where it gets interesting. Behind Thursday's departing storm system and its flooding concerns over the Plains, a crisp, dry high takes over the eastern Nebraska, Iowa, and southern Wisconsin corridor, and for a few hours it actually clears every single gate on the scale. Sioux City, Iowa is sitting at 98.8. Dakota Dunes, South Dakota and Homer, Nebraska are over 99. That is the genuine top tier, not the usual near-miss we write about most days, and it's the best score anywhere in the country over this entire seven-day stretch.
The numbers behind it are almost boring in how good they are: highs near 58 degrees, dewpoints in the mid 40s, just 14 percent cloud cover, winds under 10 mph, and an AQI in the low 30s. This is sweater weather at its most comfortable, the kind of afternoon built for yard work, a long bike path, or just sitting outside with a book. Omaha, Minneapolis, Des Moines, and Rochester, Minnesota all ride the edge of this same system into Beautiful territory.
One caveat worth saying plainly: Thursday's rain left saturated ground and some river rises behind it in spots across Nebraska and Iowa, so even with Friday turning dry and gorgeous, steer clear of flooded roads, swollen creeks, and riverbanks that haven't had time to recede.
Saturday, the Good Air Slides East
By Saturday the same high pressure dome drifts into the central Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, and Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Cleveland all land in Beautiful conditions, cool, dry, sunny, with light wind and highs in the upper 60s. Day 3 is capped at Beautiful by the forecast-day rules regardless of how clean the numbers get, but don't let that technicality fool you. Chicago at 65.9 degrees with 5 percent cloud cover and an 11 mph breeze is a legitimately great day to be outside, whether that means a farmers market, a lakefront run, or finally raking the yard. Albuquerque's Balloon Fiesta also kicks off that same day under its own lingering piece of Southwest ridge, so if you've got travel plans there, the sky should cooperate.
Where Not to Count On It
If your weekend plans point toward Texas, hold your expectations loosely. Austin City Limits Weekend One opens Friday right as the WPC keeps a rainfall risk draped across the I-35 corridor, a separate and ongoing story we've been tracking all week. That's not this week's nice weather zone, and it isn't likely to become one before the weekend wraps.
A Streak Worth Mentioning
Buried in the data is a quiet, unglamorous winner: the Sierra Nevada foothill towns east of Sacramento, places like Roseville, Folsom, Rocklin, Auburn, and Placerville, are all sitting on live 90-day streaks of Nice-or-better conditions. No fireworks, no record highs, just three straight months of pleasant, livable weather while the rest of the country has lurched through hurricanes, flash floods, and severe outbreaks. Sometimes boring is the whole point.
For the full picture of where the good air is headed next, the Nice Weather outlook page keeps the daily maps and city rankings updated as this ridge rolls from the desert to the Corn Belt to the Great Lakes over the next three days.