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Tomorrow's clouds and rain are going to be tough to forecast. The model develops rain right over Rapid City, as we saw earlier. There's no good way to evaluate the validity of this forecast, but we can figure some things out. For example, it seems that the low pressure center is developing farther west than the model thinks, since we just estimated that the cold front will reach RAP seven hours later than the model implied. So, let's look at the rain forecast relative to the front: how much rain does the model crank out in most places during the first 24 hours after the front goes by?
As best I can figure, it looks like category 4 or category 5, about the same amount as at RAP. Since I'm basically suspicious of a model developing an area of precipitation out of nothing, I'm going to (tentatively) forecast a category of 3.
Oops, I just looked at the radar composite, and there's already rain in southwestern South Dakota. According to the precip forecast, nothing was even supposed to form until after 00Z. Well, no point in being skeptical about the rain forming now, since it's already there! I'll bump up my forecast to category 4.
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