A winning weekend arrives before seasons first 60s, rain and eventual cool down

ROCKFORD, Ill. (WIFR) - The warmest weekend of the year so far will bring continued sunny conditions and temperatures inching up each day into next week. Enjoy this because first pictures of a slightly colder trend are returning to the forecast.

Temperatures in the 40s once again with widespread sunshine are in store Saturday with northeasterly winds. I anticipate there will be very long lines at area car washes this weekend, as through early next week there will be plenty of winning days in the forecast. Sunday we will warm up into the 50s with more sunshine and southerly winds before we rinse and repeat that again just with 60s by the beginning of next week.

Continued improvements are in the forecast through the weekend.(Ethan Rosuck, WIFR)

The next few days mark a great time to take your car to the car wash.(Ethan Rosuck, WIFR)

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday all call for high temperatures of 60 degrees or warmer. The peak of the warmth will occur Wednesday with a forecast high of 64 degrees for Rockford. However this will come with a more active pattern as rain returns to the forecast. This midweek system will bring scattered showers, perhaps a few thunderstorms Wednesday through Thursday. As it seems now, the risk for severe weather and heavy rainfall appears low.

We turn a bit more active into next week.(Ethan Rosuck, WIFR)

Precipitation’s been absent to begin the month and this will stay that way through most of Tuesday. At the earliest, our first precipitation is to come Tuesday night. That would mean we’d have gone the first eight days of the month without a drop of rain nor a flake of snow. That’s quite the feat! Not since 1949 had a March opened with eight straight dry days, and it’s happened just three times in total, dating back to 1893.

At the earliest, our first precipitation is to come our way next Tuesday. It'll mark just the... — At the earliest, our first precipitation is to come our way next Tuesday. It'll mark just the fourth time, and the first time in 72 years, that precipitation fails to occur in March's first eight days.(Mark Henderson, WIFR)

Once this streak ends, temperatures will fall back into the 50s for late next week. By next weekend, high temperatures in the 40s return and this will set the stage for a cooler weather pattern that will return by the end of March. The latest outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center show just that, with temperatures near normal and a slightly favored chance for more precipitation by the week of March 20.

Enjoy the next few days folks, we can’t emphasize that enough!