Rain from Dennis will stay mostly in Illinois

Around noon today cirrus clouds from the outer remnants of hurricane Dennis began to move north across the area, holding the high temperature in Madison to 88 degrees, but areas farther south where the clouds moved in earlier were cooler, such as Monroe and Mineral Point both at 84. Some areas in the central and northern parts of the state where clouds had not yet arrived reached the lower 90s. Eau Claire, Wausau, Green Bay, and Rhinelander all reached 91 this afternoon.

Winds switched to predominantly an easterly direction ahead of the approaching circulation of Dennis, which helped hold Milwaukee to a high of 83.
Southern Lake Michigan surface temperatures are now around 70 degrees though, so the amount of cooling from an easterly wind is much less there now than it was a month or two ago.

St. Louis is currently receiving a good soaking rain from the remnants of Dennis, and outer bands of showers have reached as far north as Bloomington-Normal Illinois, but it looks as the Dennis will soon stall and only spread scattered showers into Wisconsin. The increased cloud cover and possible showers will hold down high temperatures for the next couple of days, but it looks unlikely that we'll receive enough rain to green things up around here very much.

Eventually Dennis will dissipate as it moves very slowly to the east, and so hotter weather may return for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It's still a week off, but it appears that a significant cold front may come through around next Monday and suppress the heat back to the south and west for a while.