Just another amazingly cold morning with low temperatures in the -40 to -20 degree range in Eastern Iowa. The featured plot of AWOS low temperatures shows a -38 in Monticello! Not shown, Waterloo tied its all-time record low temperature of -34. Temperatures are expected to warm up today and be near freezing this weekend, that is a 50 some degree warm up!

Voting:
Good = 47
Bad = 17

Tags:   cold   2009events  

A brutally cold air mass is currently entrenched over the Upper MidWest with low temperatures this morning in the minus teens and twenties across Iowa. The featured analysis shows negative numbers over much of the area. The big question today is if we will warm to above zero!

Voting:
Good = 28
Bad = 6

Tags:   cold   2009events  

The featured graph is a time series from the Spencer airport sensor showing air temps, wind speeds, and visibility distance. The morning hours saw a round of snowfall followed by improving conditions where temperatures rose to above freezing in many locations followed by a frontal passage with rapidly deteoriating conditions followed by a decrease in wind speeds with improving visibilities by bitterly cold temperatures. All of that makes for quite the weather day! The next winter storm will be here this evening already!

Voting:
Good = 23
Bad = 6

Tags:   coldfront  

The featured map is an analysis of minimum wind chill value on Sunday. Very cold air rushed into the state this past weekend thanks to strong northwest wind that gusted upwards of 40 miles per hour. A good portion of the state experienced wind chill values below -30°F. Winds have finally backed off some with slightly warmer weather expected before our next winter storm on Tuesday. Remember that today is only the 2nd day of winter!

Voting:
Good = 22
Bad = 8

Tags:   cold  

The cold front passage on Sunday was one for the record books due to the drastic and rapid change in temperature. Today's featured plot is a time series from Ottumwa showing an amazing drop of 80 degrees in 12 hours. Note this is a drop from an air temperature of 60 to a wind chill value of -20. The actual air temperature drop was around 60 degrees in just 12 hours! Some analysis is currently being done to compare this drop to others in the past, stay tuned.

Voting:
Good = 33
Bad = 16

Tags:   coldfront   extreme  

A very intense cold front crossed the state on Sunday dropping our temperatures from the 40s and 50s almost immediately to values below freezing. The featured graph is a timeseries from the Corning SchoolNet site with observations shown every 6 seconds for a period of only 15 minutes! The rapid wind shift and initial temperature drop take place within a minute. Temperatures continued dropping for the rest of the day on Sunday and now are below zero for many locations in Iowa.

Voting:
Good = 36
Bad = 7

Tags:   coldfront  

The featured chart is of air temperatures from the Des Moines airport from Monday evening to Tuesday evening. You can see the precipitous 50 degree drop in temperature over just 24 hours. Today will be another very cold day with highs around 10 with more chances of snow beginning this evening and lasting into the weekend. Our brutal winter continues!

Voting:
Good = 23
Bad = 2

Tags:   coldfront