The National Weather Service Damage Assessment Toolkit (DAT) is a post-event storm survey platform that provides information from NWS damage surveys typically following tornado events. NWS Quad Cities / Davenport has completed a couple of such surveys following tornadoes during storms last week. The IEM offers a visualization of the "DAT tracks" that combines NWS Tornado Warnings along with an estimated track timing. The shown tornado tracked just southeast of Maquoketa. There are also Public Information Statements (PNS) associated with these DAT events with this PNS covering this featured tornado. The IEM also maintains a simple google email group that anybody can subscribe to receive emails when the NWS publishes such PNS damage survey results.

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Yesterday's Daily Feature presented a considerable amount of needed precipitation forecast to fall during the first part of April. The first two days of April have lived up to that forecast with much of the state already over an inch. The featured map presents NOAA MRMS precipitation estimates for the first two days of April. These totals will be added to today with multiple rounds of showers and thunderstorms expected.

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The featured map combines Weather Prediction Center seven day precipitation forecast with last week's Drought Monitor. The prediction paints a much needed wet start to April over Iowa. It is getting down to crunch time for precipitation deficits to be made up prior to the start of the growing season. It is also a good time to make up such deficits as it is still too early for farmers to plant crops and soils are no longer frozen. The only downside to this forecast is far western Iowa with totals that are not much higher than climatology this time of year, but something is better than nothing!

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The warm temperatures on Monday gave way to late afternoon and early evening thunderstorms that brought hail to the Des Moines Metro and other places over Iowa. The featured map presents a summary of Local Storm Reports (LSR)s issued by NWS Des Moines for hail Monday evening. The largest hail report listed was 1.25" over Waukee (west Des Moines suburb). The autoplot tool that generates these maps is a downstream infographic associated with the raw NWS LSR Text (scroll to the bottom). The IEM has a number of ways to view and download LSR data, including the LSR App and data download. For a pro-tip, if you know the three character NWS office identifier, you can enter the combination of LSR and that identifier into the upper right search box and be taken to the most recently issued LSR from that office along with the map graphic like is featured today.

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Temperatures soared again on Monday with records highs set at a number of locations across Iowa. The weather station at Spencer (NW Iowa) started off the morning with a low temperature of 33°F and warmed to 86°F, making for a 53°F difference between the daily low and high. The featured chart looks into the largest such calendar day temperature differences for the state. The right hand side cartoons display the temperature time-series for each event to give a feel for how the temperature changed during the day (and often a visual sign of data quality issues, alas). Interestingly, just over a week ago was another such 53°F change on the 21rst. The largest difference of 55°F was associated with a cold front passage as colder air rushed in after an early afternoon high temperature.

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Temperatures warmed nicely on Sunday with high temperatures well into the 60s and even low 70s for Iowa. Des Moines reported a high temperature of 68°F, which made for the tenth day this March with a high temperature of at least 65°F. The featured chart presents the number of such days each March for Des Moines. With high temperatures easily above this threshold on Monday and perhaps again for the last day of March on Tuesday, this year will either tie for third or be in third place for the most number of such days. Such days are not a given during March as shown by the many years without a single such day! The chart also nicely shows how much of an outlier March 2012 was, with no other year even close to that year's total.

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Temperatures started off Thursday morning quite mild over Iowa, but a frontal boundary created a strong temperature gradient by the afternoon as shown by the featured map analysis valid 3 PM CDT (20 UTC). Far northwestern Iowa is shown near 40°F while far southeastern Iowa is into the 80s. This boundary helped to fire some late afternoon thunderstorms, but the majority of the storms were east of the state. The featured map is from the IEM Reanalysis project which attempts to provide weather variables consistently on a spatial grid.

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Wednesday was yet another rather warm day this March with highs well into the 70s and even a few 80s. A few folks have wondered how this March compares with the benchmark warm March of 2012. The featured chart presents the month to date accumulated average temperature computed over the state of Iowa by the IEM. The black line is 2012, the red line is 2026 and then the spaghetti lines after the 25th represent scenarios appending previous 26-31 March values onto this year's accumulated value to represent a range of possible scenarios. As you can see, even the warmest scenario still comes up about 6 to 7°F (hi kids) degrees short of 2012. It is interesting to see how 2026 did have a lead over 2012 up until the Ides of March, but the second half of March 2012 was exceptionally warm.

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The persistent warmth that has dominated the western half of the contiguous United States this winter season continues to set daily and even monthly temperature records. The featured map is an unofficial IEM accounting of climate district average temperature ranks for the astronomical winter season (~20 Dec to ~20 Mar). A value of "1" indicates the warmest value since at least 1893. Iowa has remained just on the fringe of the most extreme positive departures, but still has experienced a top 10% warmest winter. Current Climate Prediction Center outlooks continue the western warmth over the common months and along with a strengthening El Niño could mean the warm weather will be with us for a while.

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An extremely warm day on Saturday gave way to something closer to average for mid March on Sunday. The temperature change between the two days was rather dramatic with most of the state ranging between 40 and 50 degrees difference between Saturday and Sunday afternoon. The featured chart presents the largest 24 hour temperature decreases for Spencer (NW Iowa) over an exact 24 hours worth of time. Rewording, this chart does not show the largest difference in temperature over a 24 hour period considering any temperature within that window of time. So the Saturday event was a 51°F degree drop from 4:53 PM on Saturday to Sunday, which is only three degrees below the largest on record for the site.

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Saturday was incredibly warm for March with temperatures soaring into the 80s and even a few 90s over Iowa and beyond. For a couple of locations, like Cedar Rapids, a new March monthly maximum temperature record was set with a high temperature of 89°F. The featured chart presents the monthly maximum temperature records for Cedar Rapids along with a little cartoon showing the day of the given month that the record resides. Sometimes these records occur during the last few or first few days of the month, which makes the records seem arbitrary due to the non-consistent month boundaries with respect to the solar day. Anyway, those pedantic issues aside, IEM unofficial areal averaged data for Iowa will likely place Saturday as the second warmest on record for high temperature behind 29 March 1986.

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The featured chart presents the daily high temperature departure from average for Sioux City for each day this year. The calculated departure on Thursday was just over 30°F above average and made for the ninth such day this year of at least 30°F. The chart nicely shows how dominant the warm weather has been since the start of February with only a few brief periods below average. Even warmer weather is expected today and on Saturday before slightly cooler weather arrives early next week, but still above average.

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Iowans have seen quite the roller coaster of conditions so far this March with snowfalls earlier this week now giving way to very warm temperatures. On Tuesday, Des Moines reported 0.5 inches of snowfall and then a high temperature of 64°F on the next day. This seems like a rather extreme combination of daily weather variables, so a new "IEM autoplot tool" has been added in this space to list out such combination of weather events. In this case, the combination of having measurable snowfall reported and then the following day high temperature is listed out showing the highest and lowest next day high temperature values. You can find the 17-18 March 2026 event listed within this summary, but 14°F less than the maximum of 78°F back in 1918. This autoplot tool can be used to generate many different arbitrary combinations of events and then preceding or proceeding number of days weather variables. For example, the tool indicates Washington DC just had its maximum high temperature 86°F on the day before a snowfall event last week! As with the entire IEM website, your feedback is welcome and guides tool development!

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Much of the state continues to need rain to make up for dry conditions that have persisted since about August of 2025. This is a fickle time of year though as temperatures are still yet chilly and moisture is limited, so significant rainfall events can be difficult to come by. The featured chart attempts to illustrate this by plotting the accumulated frequency of having at least an inch of precipitation accumulated after 18 March. For example, about half of previous years on record for Ames have accumulated at least an inch between 18 March and 4 April. Remarkably, a couple of years took over a month of time to accumulate just an inch or more. Unfortunately, the near term forecast is quite dry as our weather is heavily influenced by the strong western US anti-cyclone that is bringing record setting warmth to the southwestern US and beyond.

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During our recent storm, 93 of Iowa's 99 counties were simultaneously under a Blizzard Warning. Is it possible to assess how much of that area experienced blizzard conditions and thus verifying the warning? A blizzard is defined as at least a three hour period of visibility reduced to 1/4 mile due to falling or blowing snow with wind gusts above 35 MPH. A primary means of meeting those requirements is provided by the automated airport weather stations and one such example is shown by the featured chart for Mason City. The plot combines the period the Blizzard Warning with automated observations of visibility and wind speed. The times of reduced visibility is assumed to be due to snow in the air. The darker shaded (bluish tint) region around 6 PM on 15 March 2026 represents a period meeting blizzard criterion. There are a few other less subtle regions that represent blizzard criterion conditions not meeting the three hour requirement. As is typically the case, a blizzard warning encompasses a time period with blizzard-like conditions, but only a limited sub-region of time will verify the warning. You can run this chart for other airport locations in the state and you will find a similar story. Of course, there are caveats galore with this type of verification as airports are often in more urban areas, which tend to experience less visibility reductions than in the rural without much of obstructions.

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Nothing like a good ole fashioned plains blizzard to remind everyone that we are not done with winter yet. The featured map attempts to analyze available snowfall reports from the NWS and CoCoRaHS, but will need updated later this Monday after more reports are received. Most of this now fell sideways and over along duration, which makes for difficult measurement and reporting. For Iowa, the highest snowfall totals were isolated to far eastern and northern Iowa. The lesser totals over the rest of the state still had a significant impact as strong winds and frigid temperatures have iced up practically all the roads for the state. The current map does indicate some areas without measurable snowfall, but more reports received later today will likely fill those in with at least measurable totals. Much warmer weather will quickly return this week.

There are many different aridity indices attempting to express how anomalous precipitation and temperatures are. One such index formulation is the subject of today's IEM daily feature. This index is computed by taking the standardized departure of average high temperature and subtracting the standardized precipitation departure over trailing 180 day windows of time. The standardization is done by dividing the actual departure by the standard deviation value, which creates a unit-less value that be used to lump the temperature and precipitation values together. Of course, no index is perfect, but some are useful. Anyway, values that are more positive are indicative of periods of water availability stress (warmer air temperatures and low precipitation totals). The trick is to realize that the precipitation departure is being subtracted in the equation, so negative precipitation departures increase the index value. What is interesting about the plot showing data for Ames since 2012 is that current values are some of the most positive shown and starting to be comparable to those during the drought of 2012. The drought situation is not urgent yet as the growing season has yet to start, but increases in precipitation would certainly help to improve drought indices like the one shown here.

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After severe storms on Tuesday over southeastern Iowa, the backside of the storm system brought a small taste of winter with a brief coating of snow over most of the rest of the state. While not much for a winter storm, there was an isolated two inch snowfall report, so that arbitrary threshold triggers an IEM map with a crude accounting of available NWS and CoCoRaHS snowfall reports. This snow almost immediately melted, so proper measurement and reporting was difficult. The map shows a couple of areas of the state with over an inch of snow from the event. We are not done with winter yet as more snow is in the forecast.

A significant severe weather event developed on Tuesday from northern Illinois/Indiana back southwest into Texas. The rough weather clipped southeastern Iowa as well with powerful storms developing during the late afternoon hours along and near a very strong surface warm front. The featured screenshot is from the ISU Soil Moisture Network homepage showing 3:30 PM air temperatures over southeastern Iowa on Tuesday. The 81.5°F plotted was near West Point and the 59.4°F was just over 30 miles away to the north near Crawfordsville. This temperature contrast made for a remarkable warm front due to the large temperature change over a very short distance. Strong warm fronts like these are typically trouble for severe weather as storms are focused along the boundary and the boundary helps to provide spin to the storms to produce large hail and even tornadoes.

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The spectacular weather on Sunday continued into Monday with record high temperatures set at a number of locations across Iowa and beyond. The calendar says we are still within the second week of March, so there is plenty of time yet for the chance of winter-like weather. The featured chart looks into an aspect of that by plotting the last cold season date of at least an inch of snow reported for Des Moines. The yearly value is plotted along with a line until the date when snow cover was no longer reported (~ how long the snow stuck around). This combination is colorized by the number of days with red values indicating the shortest duration. The left panel black line plots the accumulated frequency of the last date. The 10 March value is somwhere just below 50%, so over half of the previous years on record reported at least a single one inch snowfall event or larger after 10 March. The right hand plot presents the date by year with two trend lines shown. A number of recent years have seen such snows into mid April and even early May, but these late season events struggle to stick around long as ever warming soils, lengthening days, and increased solar inputs act to quickly melt the snow away.

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