Rockford, IL Weather Forecast
Winnebago County, Illinois
Seven-day outlook
39–67°F across the weekThe week runs between 39° and 67°, with Tuesday the warmest day of it. There is no real trend across it: one day looks much like the next. Saturday is the wettest day, peaking near 67%.
Forecasts come from the National Weather Service's own computer models, and current conditions from the nearest reporting weather station. Both are served through the weather API. A forecast is guidance, not a warning, and anything the Weather Service has actually issued is on the live map.
The written summaries on this page are generated from the forecast data above, not by a meteorologist. Each sentence is a reading of the same numbers you can see, and no forecaster has reviewed them.
About the Rockford forecast
Rockford sits at 42.2588°N, 89.0646°W in Winnebago County, Illinois. The forecast above is drawn for that point from the National Weather Service's own computer models: a seven-day outlook, and a finer-grained one covering the next eighteen hours where it reaches, and the radar and alert panels show what the Weather Service has out over the area right now.
- County
- Winnebago County
- Coordinates
- 42.2588°N, 89.0646°W
- Population
- 146,120 · 2023 estimate
- Land area
- 65.084 sq mi
Place data from the US Census Bureau. Coordinates are the Census internal point for Rockford, and the forecast is for that location, not for every address inside the city limits, and a large city can have real weather differences from one side to the other.
How well can the network see Rockford?
The nearest Doppler radar is KMKX (Milwaukee, WI), 56 miles to the NNE. A WSR-88D's lowest routine scan sits half a degree above horizontal, and the earth curves away beneath it, so by the time that beam reaches Rockford its center is about 4,100 ft above ground. That is far enough out that the beam has climbed above the lowest few thousand feet. Storm structure aloft is visible; a shallow circulation near the ground may not be, and a warning here can arrive before anything looks dramatic on the radar picture.
The closest instrument actually measuring the air is KRFD · Rockford Intl on the ASOS/AWOS network, 4.8 miles away. Close enough that its readings are, for practical purposes, the conditions in town.
Beam height is the standard 4/3-earth approximation for the 0.5° scan and assumes normal refraction; it is where the center of the beam is, not its edges, and unusual temperature profiles bend it. Radar siting from the NWS WSR-88D network, station positions from the Illinois observing network as of this build.
Forecasts near Rockford
- Cherry Valley, IL5 mi
- Loves Park, IL6 mi
- Machesney Park, IL8 mi
- Winnebago, IL9 mi
- Belvidere, IL9 mi
- Davis Junction, IL10 mi
- Roscoe, IL12 mi
- Poplar Grove, IL13 mi
Elsewhere in Illinois
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