(Radio Iowa) – Forecasters say the summer-like weather will have a last hurrah today (Thursday) and tomorrow before we fall headlong into the more seasonable chill of autumn, with a frost and freeze likely early next week. Meteorologist Craig Cogil at the National Weather Service, says Iowans are in for a temperature rollercoaster over the next few days. “We’re going to see highs in the upper 70s to 80s across much of the state as we head into Friday, even near-record highs are expected across portions of central and southern Iowa,” Cogil says, “so certainly unseasonably warm weather as we end out the work week.” Just last weekend, many Iowa communities saw high temps in the mid-90s. This weekend, though, it’ll definitely feel like fall as a cold front is expected to arrive late Friday.

“We’re going to see progressively colder air move into the state through the weekend. It looks like the coldest morning will be Tuesday morning, with lows down in the mid to upper 20s in northern Iowa, to lower 30s in southern Iowa,” Cogil says. “So it does look like widespread frost and freeze conditions across the state and probably the end of the growing season.” Iowa’s first frost is tracking right on target, Cogil says, as next Tuesday is the 15th of October. “In general, a good average is right around the 15th of the month,” Cogil says. “You go up into northern Iowa, it’s usually the first week. If you get down into southeast, south-central Iowa, it’s usually the third or last week of the month. So yeah, it’s about average.”

Cogil says the weather pattern that produced both hurricanes Helene and Milton in the Gulf of Mexico is having a continued impact on Iowa’s climate, too. “One of the biggest effects we’ve seen from that is the fact that it’s keeping a lot of the moisture that might work up into the central part of the United States, it’s keeping it down in the Gulf,” Cogil says. “We’re not really seeing much moisture return, which is leading to a lot of the -at least- dry conditions that we’ve seen recently.”

A new map is due out later this (Thursday) morning from the U-S Drought Monitor. The map from last week shows only about six Iowa counties have no significant moisture problems, while around 70-percent of the state is abnormally dry, with 23-percent of Iowa in moderate drought, and portions of Harrison and Monona counties in western Iowa under severe drought.