Sun to rain by tonight; tropical storm swamps Texas

The promise of June is on full display across Minnesota.

Bright sunshine, a clear blue sky, a clean comfortable air mass with dew points in the upper 40s.

Does it get any better than this?

Of course June's promise in Minnesota also means rain is usually not far away. Our next weather maker rolls through the Dakotas with showers and thunderstorms today.

Clouds return late today and rain coverage increases from west to east by tonight. My view is this National Weather Service graphic may be a little too fast with rainfall timing for the metro.

The next low pressure wave rolls through with another shot of rain tomorrow on the maps.

It could be worse. Watch Tropical Storm Bill roll into Texas and Oklahoma spreading an arc of heavy rains over already saturated Texas.

More on Bill below. First, Minnesota's weather outlook.

Here's a close up graphical look at the next 48 hours. Rain chances creep into the metro forecast this evening, but the best chance of rain rolls in overnight into Wednesday. Dew points reach the magically sticky 60 degree mark tomorrow.

Rainfall totals look highest in central Minnesota. A few spots in the metro may pick up a half-inch-plus with localized downpours tomorrow.

Occasionally wet into the weekend

I'm the on-site weather support for 89.3 The Current's big Rock the Garden event this weekend. I keep kicking the Weather Lab supercomputers for a better solution to the notion of scattered rain and thunder Saturday.

So far no luck.

Sunday has trended drier on the overnight European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts model runs. With an active jet stream overhead, forecast are likely to stay in flux this weekend.

The sunniest days right now looks like Thursday and, of course, Monday. Still holding out hope for a decent Sunday.

Crops ahead of schedule

It's been a great spring. The first half of June is also running milder than average across most of Minnesota.

• 2.2 degrees warmer than average at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport so far in June

• 2 degrees warmer than average in Duluth so far in June

• 1.4 degrees temps warmer average in International Falls, Minn., so far in June

The Weather Lab garden is happy this year.

Crops are responding nicely to the mild days and ample rainfall this year across Minnesota. Soybeans are nearly two weeks ahead of last year's pace. Corn is well on the way to knee high(er) by the Fourth of July.

More detail from the this week's Minnesota Crop Report.

Minnesota’s corn condition rated 77 percent good to excellent, up 4 percentage points from last week. With soybean planting virtually complete, 94 percent of the soybean acreage had emerged, 13 days ahead of the previous year and 10 days ahead of the five-year average. Soybean condition rated 74 percent good to excellent.

Here's a closer look at temps and rainfall for the past week. Southeast Minnesota saw the heaviest rains, northern Minnesota was warmest compared to average.

Tropical Storm Bill comes ashore

Tropical Storm Bill is the second named storm of the supposedly quiet Atlantic Hurricane season. Bill is better organized, and ready to deliver a summer's worth of rain to many already saturated towns in east Texas.

Here's the increasingly impressive swirl of spiraling rain bands as Bill wraps up and rolls ashore northeast of Corpus Christi today.

Note the massive plume of rain on Bill's eastern side. Bill tracks into the southern Plains over the next few days.

As Bill moves inland, a pipeline of Gulf moisture will wrap around the center and get wrung out over Texas. Prolific rainfall totals of 4 to 12 inches-plus means more flooding ahead for already saturated east Texas.

Some eye opening wording from the National Hurricane Center.

HAZARDS AFFECTING LAND

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RAINFALL: Bill is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 4 to 8 inches over eastern Texas and eastern Oklahoma and 2 to 4 inches over western Arkansas and southern Missouri, with possible isolated maximum amounts of 12 inches in eastern Texas.

It doesn't take a genius meteorology degree to see the potential flooding rainfall arc from Bill extends well north of Texas to Oklahoma City, Okla., and even St. Louis over the next 72 hours.

Prepare for more national news headlines from Texas this week.