On Friday evening, a powerful cluster of thunderstorms developed into a Mesoscale Convective System and moved east and south bringing some much needed rainfall to southern Iowa early Saturday morning. These systems can have an expansive area of precipitation associated with them and sometimes this area can decay quickly leading to what happened on Saturday morning, a "Wake Low". This even was captured nicely by the Mason City Airport weather station and the featured chart presents one minute interval data from the event. These events are marked by rapid drops in pressure, which drive a rapid increase in wind speed. Sure enough, the chart shows the increase in wind while the pressure continued to drop and then moderation of the wind as the pressure returned to background state condition. Strong events like these, with winds gusts over 50 MPH, tend to do damage as was the case with wind damage reported over north-central Iowa.

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Tags:   wakelow