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.

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!

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.