From akrherz at iastate.edu Mon Aug 1 11:00:51 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2011 11:00:51 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108011600.p71G0pNS031917@despam-11.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 01 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature No feature posted > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 31 Jul 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 0 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 Svr Tstorm 99 0 | 1 0 0 0 0 | 1 Fl Flood 30 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 100 Verified: 52 [52.0 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [82.1 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [26.6 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [23.4 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1492 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.87] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.48] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.48] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Tue Aug 2 11:00:42 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2011 11:00:42 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108021600.p72G0guW004911@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 02 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-01 | Title : Steamy July | Date : 01 Aug 05:45 AM | Votes : Good: 19 Bad: 2 +---------------------------------------------- Thankfully, July of 2011 is history, but the heat and muggy weather looks to continue. The featured chart presents the number of hours during July for the past 40 years that the heat index was above 100 degrees for Des Moines. This year's total comes in slightly higher than 1999. The average during this period is just over 28 hours as shown by the blue line. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 01 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 2 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 216 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 7 Fl Flood 26 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 215 Verified: 121 [56.3 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [79.3 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [18.3 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [23.0 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1435 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.88] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.44] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.52] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Wed Aug 3 11:00:25 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2011 11:00:25 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108031600.p73G0PWx002364@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 03 August 2011 > News +---------------------------------------------- | Title : IEM Cow Improvement | Date : 03 Aug 10:51 AM | Author: Daryl Herzmann | URL : http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cow/ +----------------------------------------------

I've added some messy logic to the IEM Cow application to allow users to limit warnings and local storm reports based on the wind...hail tags used by some NWS offices to indicate the severity of the severe thunderstorm warning. IEM Cow does on-demand verification of NWS issued storm based warnings.

This addition allows the cow to verify the warnings based on the wind and hail thresholds specified at warning issuance. You can also now set the wind threshold to verify warnings against.

The logic on this page is getting extremely complex and can lead to having local storm reports appear unverified, because the warning issued had too low thresholds set against your set thresholds! Leaving the thresholds at the default will give more "correct" results, but filtering on higher end values can provide interesting data nonetheless.

Hopefully, I just didn't break something! > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-02 | Title : Humid Periods | Date : 02 Aug 05:57 AM | Votes : Good: 17 Bad: 3 +---------------------------------------------- Dew point temperatures once again soared into the upper 70s and lower 80s on Monday. These temperatures were remarkable for the calendar now being in August! The featured chart presents IEM calculated yearly maximum period where the dew point remains above 75 degrees and the total number of hours above 75 degrees. This year is still behind last year by those metrics, but there is still plenty of time to go in August to catch up. While not shown on the chart, many of these humid periods occurred during August. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 02 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 2 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 92 0 | 0 0 0 0 1 | 5 Fl Flood 19 0 | 1 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report PHP Notice: Undefined index: expire in /mesonet/www/apps/iemwebsite/include/cow.php on line 471 PHP Notice: Undefined index: expire in /mesonet/www/apps/iemwebsite/include/cow.php on line 471 SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 94 Verified: 52 [55.3 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [73.9 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [17.7 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [17.0 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [2141 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.79] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.45] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.48] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Thu Aug 4 11:00:50 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 11:00:50 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108041600.p74G0oG7031803@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 04 August 2011 > News +---------------------------------------------- | Title : ASOS Currents Improvements | Date : 03 Aug 01:23 PM | Author: Daryl Herzmann | URL : http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/ASOS/current.phtml +----------------------------------------------

The ASOS currents application has been uploaded to support the display of observations in simple comma delimited format or a Geo- JSON(P) webservice. The Geo-JSON(P) format allows others to easily include the data in their web-mapping mashups. Please let us know if you find this service useful and/or could use some tweaks to it.

One caveat is that in Iowa on the IEM, the AWOS sites are separate from the ASOS sites. All other states, they are thrown together. If this posses a problem for you, please let us know. > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-03 | Title : Second Warmest RAGBRAI | Date : 03 Aug 05:57 AM | Votes : Good: 19 Bad: 11 +---------------------------------------------- The Register???s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) took place last week and was a quite warm for participants. This 6 day long trek across Iowa starts on the Missouri River and ends on the Mississippi River. Assuming that the weather reported by the Des Moines station is representative of the state, the featured chart presents the average heat index and westerly wind for the six day period each year that RABGRAI occurred on since it started in 1973. This year's average heat index was second to 1999. The bottom chart looks at a simple average of the westerly wind component during daylight hours. A wind from the east (negative values) would mean a head wind for bicyclists generally heading from the west to east. Easterly winds are typically associated with cooler weather, so you can pick your poison or a headwind or hot weather! > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 03 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 1 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 115 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 3 Fl Flood 37 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report PHP Notice: Undefined index: expire in /mesonet/www/apps/iemwebsite/include/cow.php on line 472 SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 113 Verified: 46 [40.7 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [78.1 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [33.2 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [21.5 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1245 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.73] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.59] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.35] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Fri Aug 5 11:00:27 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2011 11:00:27 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108051600.p75G0R4U030668@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 05 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-04 | Title : 5 failures to reach 100 | Date : 04 Aug 05:55 AM | Votes : Good: 20 Bad: 4 +---------------------------------------------- Our recent stretch of very warm weather saw some locations in the state hit the century mark. The official weather sensor for Des Moines is a the airport and the best it was able to do was 99 degrees on five different days. The featured chart presents the one minute interval temperature data for these five days. Our most recent chance on 2 August was our best one with temperatures reaching near 100 degrees early in the afternoon, but a front moved through just as the temperature was about to hit 100! The 20 July event saw temperatures hover at 99 for around three hours without hitting 100. Having five days hit 99 without hitting 100 for the year is most on record for Des Moines. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 04 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 0 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 145 1 | 0 0 1 0 0 | 6 Fl Flood 27 1 | 0 0 1 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report PHP Notice: Undefined index: expire in /mesonet/www/apps/iemwebsite/include/cow.php on line 472 SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 138 Verified: 48 [34.8 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [77.8 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [29.5 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [15.2 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1344 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.68] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.65] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.30] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Sat Aug 6 11:00:17 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2011 11:00:17 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108061600.p76G0HuL030765@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 06 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-05 | Title : Getting both warmth and rain | Date : 05 Aug 05:57 AM | Votes : Good: 11 Bad: 10 +---------------------------------------------- This growing season has seen both hot weather and above average rainfall for most places in the state. The featured chart presents Ames stress degree day and precipitation departures from long term averages. 2011 has seen the biggest stress degree day departure since 1988. The top chart clearly shows the years with excess heat having the least amount of rainfall. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 05 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 1 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 90 0 | 0 0 0 0 1 | 3 Fl Flood 17 0 | 0 0 0 0 1 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 91 Verified: 45 [49.5 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [74.8 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [23.8 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [15.8 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [2019 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.74] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.51] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.42] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Sun Aug 7 11:00:58 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2011 11:00:58 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108071600.p77G0wHv004336@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 07 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature No feature posted > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 06 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 8 2 | 0 0 2 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 114 13 | 0 0 14 23 4 | 2 Fl Flood 10 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 123 Verified: 69 [56.1 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [69.8 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [32.3 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [22.4 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1423 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.83] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.44] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.50] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Mon Aug 8 11:00:41 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2011 11:00:41 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108081600.p78G0fmw021195@despam-11.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 08 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-07 | Title : Long stretch of muggy | Date : 07 Aug 07:21 PM | Votes : Good: 16 Bad: 3 +---------------------------------------------- The recent few days have been refreshing after a stretch of brutally high dew points. Dew point temperatures for Des Moines have yet to decline below 60 since the 3rd of July. This makes for the longest period above 60 for Des Moines since the early 1930s. The featured plot presents the yearly maximum streak of having dew point temperatures above 60 and the time period over which the streak occurred. The plot nicely shows most of these streaks happening over July and August. With August only a week old, there is plenty of time to increase our streak this year. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 07 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 5 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 257 2 | 0 3 2 10 4 | 11 Fl Flood 18 0 | 0 0 0 0 1 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 255 Verified: 131 [51.4 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [68.3 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [30.1 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [18.3 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1854 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.78] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.49] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.45] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Tue Aug 9 11:00:43 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 11:00:43 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108091600.p79G0hPT001644@despam-11.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 09 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-08 | Title : Reliable Rains | Date : 08 Aug 08:45 PM | Votes : Good: 9 Bad: 2 +---------------------------------------------- Getting timely rainfalls in July and August are critical for corn and soy production in Iowa. Some places in the southern plains have had crop failures this year because of the lack of rain and blistering heat. In Iowa, most places have seen timely rainfalls so far this summer. The featured chart presents the longest period during July and August in between quarter of an inch and half inch rainfalls for Ames. It is remarkable to note the lack of many above long term average periods during the past 20 years. This year looks to continue this trend of not seeing long periods of dry weather. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 08 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 10 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 209 7 | 0 9 2 1 0 | 7 Fl Flood 13 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 216 Verified: 104 [48.1 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [70.0 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [28.7 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [20.5 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1621 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.79] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.52] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.43] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Wed Aug 10 11:00:38 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:00:38 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108101600.p7AG0cFH028337@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 10 August 2011 > News +---------------------------------------------- | Title : July ASOS data uploaded | Date : 10 Aug 10:18 AM | Author: Daryl Herzmann | URL : http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/asos/1min.phtml +----------------------------------------------

The one minute interval Iowa ASOS data for July 2011 has been uploaded to the IEM. Data for Omaha, Sioux Falls, and Moline are made available as well. This information is provided on a monthly basis by the National Climatic Data Center, but the data format is extremely difficult to work with and undocumented. There is hope that this dataset will be available in an easier to process format on a daily (near realtime) basis soon! +---------------------------------------------- | Title : 60+ Dew Point Streak | Date : 10 Aug 08:34 AM | Author: Daryl Herzmann | URL : http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/ +----------------------------------------------

Much drier air finally arrived in the state yesterday dropping our dew point temperatures below 60 degrees for the first time in a very long while. For the Des Moines Airport ASOS sensor, this was the first sub-60 dew point since the 2nd of July. According to IEM calculations, this was easily the longest streak of greater than 60 degree for Des Moines on record (since 1933). Here is a listing of the top 5 streaks.

YearHours Start TimeEnd Time
2011907 1 PM - 2 July8 AM - 9 Aug
2010732 6 PM - 15 July6 AM - 15 Aug
1935619 4 AM - 17 July11 PM - 11 Aug
1990612 9 AM - 13 Aug9 PM - 7 Sep
2001597 11 PM - 15 July10 PM - 9 Aug

Here is a plot of these streaks:

Please note that this data is not official, but calculated locally by the IEM. Additionally, the dew point was only below 60 for 1 hour on July 2nd, prior sub 60 dew point was back on 29 June. > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-09 | Title : Unequally warm July | Date : 09 Aug 07:08 PM | Votes : Good: 11 Bad: 4 +---------------------------------------------- NOAA recently released estimates of July average temperatures and put this year as the 7th warmest on record for Iowa. The featured chart presents an analysis of hourly temperature departures and percentiles based on hourly data for Des Moines. The plot clearly shows the most exceptional temperatures occurring during the night time hours, which indeed tells the story of this month having very warm low temperatures. This was a result of the record amount of humidity in the state this July helping to keep temperatures warm overnight. Based on some IEM calculations: this July was the warmest on record for low temperatures statewide, but only the 40th warmest for highs (since 1893). The average of those two values gets us to 7th warmest. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 09 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 15 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 Svr Tstorm 201 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 8 Fl Flood 4 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 218 Verified: 116 [53.2 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [69.1 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [23.3 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [25.6 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1609 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.84] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.47] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.48] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Thu Aug 11 11:00:26 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 11:00:26 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108111600.p7BG0QXP015576@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 11 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-10 | Title : Still featuring July | Date : 10 Aug 10:20 PM | Votes : Good: 5 Bad: 2 +---------------------------------------------- It is hard not to keep featuring interesting stats from July after such an exceptional month! The featured chart displays the July high and low temperature departures from long term average for Des Moines. The bottom plot displays the monthly high versus low departure with a good correlation of 0.6 shown, which means warm highs usually mean warm lows and vice versa. The red dot on the scatter plot shows how exceptional this year was for low temperature. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 10 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 3 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 100 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 4 Fl Flood 5 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 97 Verified: 61 [62.9 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [74.1 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [23.0 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [20.7 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [2015 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.86] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.37] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.57] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Fri Aug 12 11:00:56 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:00:56 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108121600.p7CG0u3k011119@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 12 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-11 | Title : Warm August as well? | Date : 11 Aug 08:20 PM | Votes : Good: 7 Bad: 2 +---------------------------------------------- The past few days have been a welcome relief from much warmer weather in July and the first few days of August. The featured chart compares the July average temperature departure from average against the following August departure. The low correlation and visual appearance would indicate that one does not necessarily beget the other. The departure so far this August is about the same as July. The forecast has temperatures near average for the next week or so. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 11 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 8 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 2 Svr Tstorm 139 0 | 0 0 0 2 7 | 3 Fl Flood 7 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 147 Verified: 81 [55.1 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [76.0 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [23.2 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [15.0 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [2232 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.86] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.45] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.51] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Sat Aug 13 11:01:30 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2011 11:01:30 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108131601.p7DG1UGB014461@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 13 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature No feature posted > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 12 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 5 0 | 0 1 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 156 0 | 0 1 0 4 1 | 4 Fl Flood 14 0 | 0 1 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 160 Verified: 83 [51.9 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [67.1 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [22.8 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [16.6 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [2031 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.78] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.48] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.45] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Sun Aug 14 11:00:30 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2011 11:00:30 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108141600.p7EG0UbQ000771@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 14 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature No feature posted > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 13 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 2 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 139 0 | 0 1 0 0 0 | 4 Fl Flood 31 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 141 Verified: 69 [48.9 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [72.7 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [30.9 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [24.4 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1267 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.72] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.51] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.41] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Mon Aug 15 11:00:46 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 11:00:46 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108151600.p7FG0k3p030470@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 15 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature No feature posted > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 14 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 7 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 112 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 3 Fl Flood 30 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 119 Verified: 72 [60.5 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [75.5 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [28.6 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [24.8 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1489 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.87] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.39] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.55] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Tue Aug 16 11:00:31 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 11:00:31 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108161600.p7GG0VBf016297@despam-11.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 16 August 2011 > News +---------------------------------------------- | Title : Nov 2010 COOP Data Uploaded | Date : 16 Aug 07:30 AM | Author: Daryl Herzmann | URL : http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/climodat/ +----------------------------------------------

The quality controlled Iowa COOP data for November 2010 has been uploaded to the IEM. These observations are kindly provided by Harry Hillaker, our state climatologist, who passes along these notes on the month:

November temperatures averaged 37.8 degrees or 2.2 degrees above normal while precipitation totaled 1.74 inches or 0.40 inch less than normal. This ranks as the 57th warmest and 54th wettest November among 138 years of records. For the fall season of Sep-Oct-Nov temperatures averaged 51.6 degrees or 1.8 degrees above normal while precipitation totaled 8.28 inches or 0.21 inch above normal. This ranks as the 50th warmest and 50th wettest autumn among 138 years of records.

The following is the number of new daily records set at COOP sites based on data back to 1951. 

                 _____________________2010 _________________
                 NOV  OCT  SEP  AUG  JUL  JUN  MAY  APR  MAR
Maximum High:     34   60   11   10    0    0   61   69    3
Minimum High:      0    4   43    6    0    5   45    6    0
Maximum Low:      19    1   20   53   19    2  112   42    7
Minimum Low:       9    1    1    2    0    0   13    1    0
Maximum Precip:   55    4  106  103  160  126   52   38   30

The following is some bulk statistics on how well IEM's daily COOP data estimator is performing on a monthly basis versus this QC'd dataset. No code changes were made. 

                 ________________2010_________________________
                 NOV   OCT   SEP   AUG   JUL   JUN   MAY   APR 
High Temp Bias   0.0   0.1   0.5   0.5   0.9   0.6   1.1   0.5 
High Temp RMSE   0.9   1.1   1.2   1.0   1.4   1.1   1.4   1.1
Low  Temp Bias   1.2   0.7   0.7   1.0   1.2   0.8   1.2   1.6
Low  Temp RMSE   1.8   2.0   1.5   1.4   1.5   1.3   1.6   2.0
Precip    Bias  -0.42 -0.05 -1.22  1.37 -1.28 -0.05 -0.64 -0.18
Precip    RMSE   0.49  0.25  1.34  0.60  1.60  1.63  0.81  0.56

The Climodat reports referenced from this news item are summaries of this daily data. > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-15 | Title : Mild stretch after hot start | Date : 15 Aug 05:51 AM | Votes : Good: 11 Bad: 3 +---------------------------------------------- August certainly started off on the hot side with highs near 100 degrees for Des Moines. The past week has been very nice though with highs in low 80s and much more comfortable humidity levels. This wonderful weather came just in time for the Iowa State Fair and it looks to continue this week. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 15 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 2 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 58 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 Fl Flood 15 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 61 Verified: 18 [29.5 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [79.1 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [15.7 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [8.7 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [2087 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.76] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.70] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.27] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Wed Aug 17 11:00:40 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:00:40 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108171600.p7HG0eGP003091@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 17 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-16 | Title : JFK's Record Rainfall | Date : 16 Aug 05:58 AM | Votes : Good: 13 Bad: 4 +---------------------------------------------- This summer has seen extremes for lack of rainfall over the southern plains and daily rainfall totals. The featured chart is of one minute interval data from New York City's JFK Airport showing a rainfall total of 7.8 inches on Sunday. While this was the largest daily rainfall total for the airport site, it is not clear if this was the largest total for New York City as the official site is at Central Park. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 16 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 1 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 22 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Fl Flood 5 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 21 Verified: 7 [33.3 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [84.8 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [17.2 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [10.7 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1336 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.61] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.67] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.28] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Thu Aug 18 11:00:13 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2011 11:00:13 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108181600.p7IG0Drt013114@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 18 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-17 | Title : Nothing too extreme for Ames yet | Date : 17 Aug 05:58 AM | Votes : Good: 13 Bad: 1 +---------------------------------------------- Portions of southwest Iowa picked up heavy amounts of rainfall yesterday morning with totals approaching four inches. For Ames, the largest daily rainfall has been 2.65 inches so far this year, which is about average for the largest total of the year. The featured chart presents the largest daily rainfall total each year and the day of the year on which that highest total occurred. The three highest totals all occurred in August. It is also interesting to have the largest totals for some year occur in late February! > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 17 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 7 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 36 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 2 Fl Flood 6 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 42 Verified: 19 [45.2 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [84.3 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [33.8 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [17.9 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1462 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.80] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.55] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.41] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Fri Aug 19 11:01:09 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:01:09 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108191601.p7JG1964025268@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 19 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-18 | Title : Fair, Fair Weather | Date : 18 Aug 05:23 AM | Votes : Good: 7 Bad: 4 +---------------------------------------------- The Iowa State Fair will end this weekend and the weather so far has been better than "butter on a stick". The high temperature on Wednesday was the warmest so far at 88, but dew points were very comfortable. The top featured chart looks at the warmest temperature reported by the Des Moines sensor during past state fairs. The bottom chart presents the number of hours during the fair that the heat index was over 90 based on hourly data from the Des Moines Airport. This year has yet to see such a reading, which has helped to boost fair attendance. There are chances of rain in the forecast, but temperatures will remain on the cool side of average. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 18 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 15 0 | 0 0 0 7 1 | 1 Svr Tstorm 268 11 | 0 0 6 43 21 | 3 Fl Flood 26 0 | 0 0 0 5 3 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 283 Verified: 163 [57.6 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [74.2 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [25.1 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [27.1 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1346 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.86] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.42] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.53] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Sat Aug 20 11:00:40 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2011 11:00:40 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108201600.p7KG0etg027370@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 20 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-19 | Title : Rain at the State Fair | Date : 19 Aug 05:57 AM | Votes : Good: 16 Bad: 2 +---------------------------------------------- The Iowa State Fair ends this weekend and has seen about an inch of rainfall so far, which is close to long term average for the Fair. The featured chart presents the yearly rainfall totals during the fair and the frequency of having five hundredths or more of rainfall on a given day. The smallest value is on day three with a less than one in five chance. 1977 was the wettest year at over eight inches. This data is from the Des Moines weather station, which is not located at the fair, but should be a close approximation. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 19 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 3 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 215 0 | 0 0 0 7 0 | 3 Fl Flood 35 0 | 0 0 0 1 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 210 Verified: 116 [55.2 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [72.0 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [23.3 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [18.8 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1481 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.77] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.45] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.47] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Sun Aug 21 11:00:32 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2011 11:00:32 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108211600.p7LG0W4n009210@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 21 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature No feature posted > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 20 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 0 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 98 0 | 1 0 0 0 0 | 2 Fl Flood 8 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 96 Verified: 46 [47.9 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [70.6 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [28.3 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [20.5 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1321 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.65] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.52] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.38] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Mon Aug 22 11:01:02 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:01:02 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108221601.p7MG12Vt015711@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 22 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature No feature posted > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 21 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 12 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 219 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 4 Fl Flood 29 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 231 Verified: 132 [57.1 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [70.4 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [27.8 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [23.7 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1447 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.87] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.43] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.53] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Tue Aug 23 11:00:23 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:00:23 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108231600.p7NG0NQi014767@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 23 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-22 | Title : Mean, Median, and Mode | Date : 22 Aug 06:03 AM | Votes : Good: 15 Bad: 2 +---------------------------------------------- Today is the first day of school for many, so the featured chart presents a refresher of something you should learned in middle school math. There are many ways to statistically represent a distribution of values. Three of those ways are the mean, the median, and the mode. The featured chart presents these three values for all daily temperatures on a monthly and annual basis. In general, these three values are close to each other except during the winter and springtime. The last value is for the entire year and there is a large difference between the mode and median/mean. Our summertime can be very persistent thanks to high humidities holding temperatures around 60 over night and in the low eighties during the day. This is about what our weather has been like for the past week and will be like for most of the coming week. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 22 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 3 0 | 0 0 0 0 2 | 0 Svr Tstorm 84 2 | 0 0 0 12 6 | 0 Fl Flood 16 0 | 0 0 0 2 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 87 Verified: 37 [42.5 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [72.5 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [19.0 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [14.5 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1347 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.69] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.57] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.36] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Wed Aug 24 11:00:33 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 11:00:33 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108241600.p7OG0Xb2003833@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 24 August 2011 > News +---------------------------------------------- | Title : Server Slowdown | Date : 23 Aug 01:49 PM | Author: Daryl Herzmann | URL : http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/ +----------------------------------------------

The east coast earthquake has increased the web demand on the IEM servers tremendously. The IEM provides some popular web services that drive data layers to various situational display applications. Hopefully traffic subsides some soon! > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-23 | Title : Drought and Flooding | Date : 23 Aug 05:58 AM | Votes : Good: 20 Bad: 5 +---------------------------------------------- The featured map presents an estimate of rainfall over the past two months and the current national drought monitor analysis (lines). Southwest Iowa has seen its share of heavy rainfall in the past few weeks and they are currently dealing with flooding. On the other end of the state, southeastern Iowa has been rather dry and the far corner is shown in "D1" (moderate drought) status. Heavy rainfall is falling this morning over north-central Iowa with the heaviest totals over a few inches. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 23 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 6 0 | 2 0 0 0 0 | 1 Svr Tstorm 96 10 | 6 0 8 1 6 | 2 Fl Flood 21 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 97 Verified: 42 [43.3 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [71.4 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [21.6 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [14.8 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1672 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.76] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.57] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.38] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Thu Aug 25 11:00:24 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:00:24 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108251600.p7PG0OGi008370@despam-11.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 25 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-24 | Title : Early evening heat burst | Date : 24 Aug 05:33 AM | Votes : Good: 19 Bad: 3 +---------------------------------------------- Rapidly decaying storms last evening over southwestern Iowa produced what appears to be a heat burst event. The featured chart is a time series from the Atlantic AWOS showing a temperature rise above 100 degrees and a dew point drop to 7 degrees, which is a classic heat burst type signature. There is some doubt if the 7 degree dew point is legitimate as other sites in the area only dropped to as much as the mid 40s. Regardless, these events typically also bring damaging winds and a few trees were reported down. Heat bursts are not fully understood by scientists yet, but the common explanation is a decaying thunderstorm encounters a layer of dry air below the storm. Virga then falls into this layer, which quickly cools it by evaporation and the air mass rapidly sinks to the ground and warms along the way. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 24 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 2 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 2 Svr Tstorm 105 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 4 Fl Flood 6 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 109 Verified: 65 [59.6 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [62.1 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [24.7 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [21.3 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1990 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.80] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.40] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.52] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Fri Aug 26 11:00:21 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:00:21 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108261600.p7QG0LwX024170@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 26 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-25 | Title : 25 degrees of relief | Date : 25 Aug 06:00 AM | Votes : Good: 14 Bad: 3 +---------------------------------------------- The muggy air that was with us on Tuesday has been vacated from the state in a hurry and replaced with a touch of fall. The dew point temperature for Ames is 25 degrees cooler now than the high of 77 on Tuesday. The forecast looks great with highs near 80 and lows near 60. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 25 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 3 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 54 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 Fl Flood 7 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 51 Verified: 27 [52.9 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [67.0 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [12.4 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [17.7 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [2027 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.67] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.47] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.42] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Sat Aug 27 11:00:35 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 11:00:35 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108271600.p7RG0Z5J011059@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 27 August 2011 > News +---------------------------------------------- | Title : NWS WWA Shapefile | Date : 26 Aug 09:55 PM | Author: Daryl Herzmann | URL : http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/GIS/ +----------------------------------------------

The IEM ingests the watch, warnings, and advisories (WWA) issued by the National Weather Service in realtime and produces a shapefile of these active products every minute for download. These geometries are based on the new high-resolution shapefiles available from the NWS here. With Hurricane Irene near some very complex geometries on the east coast, this generated shapefile size ballooned! To cut down on hopefully un-needed precision with this file, I have implemented a simplify technique on the geometries. This result is a zip file size decrease from 35 MB to 4 MB.

If this change causes you some issue, please let me know. > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-26 | Title : Ugly scar | Date : 26 Aug 05:53 AM | Votes : Good: 21 Bad: 5 +---------------------------------------------- Besides dumping heavy rainfall last week, a cluster of powerful thunderstorms dropped large hail over parts of southwestern Iowa last Thursday. A week later and a clear sky overhead allowed the Terra MODIS satellite to get a good look at the result of the hail storm. These hail scars are easily visible given the contrast of green crops and the hailed on areas whose green leaves were stripped away exposing the brown ground. The featured image combines the satellite image with NWS collected reports of hail size on the 18th. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 26 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 5 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 2 Svr Tstorm 23 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 Fl Flood 4 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 28 Verified: 5 [17.9 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [88.8 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [15.7 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [6.9 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1150 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.26] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.82] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.12] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Sun Aug 28 11:00:15 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 11:00:15 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108281600.p7SG0FwQ009189@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 28 August 2011 > News +---------------------------------------------- | Title : 91 million hits | Date : 28 Aug 08:43 AM | Author: Daryl Herzmann | URL : http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/usage/ +----------------------------------------------

The IEM website set a milestone for hits of 91 million on Saturday thanks to Hurricane Irene. These hits totaled about 1.5 terabytes of traffic. A majority of these hits are against the various NEXRAD web services provided.

Up until recently, the web statistics page linked from this news item had a bug which would only present the last day of traffic. I have fixed this issue and it should work normally into the future. 

17 Jun 2001:    1rst hit
25 Jun 2001:      1,000+
19 Sep 2001:     10,000+
19 Mar 2004:    100,000+
25 May 2005:    200,000+
30 May 2006:    500,000+
29 Nov 2006:  1,000,000+
24 Feb 2007:  2,000,000+
17 Oct 2007:  3,000,000+
 5 Feb 2008:  4,000,000+
27 May 2008:  5,000,000+
 5 Jun 2008:  8,000,000+
15 Jul 2009: 10,000,000+
 7 Jan 2010: 15,000,000+
29 Jan 2010: 16,000,000+
 9 Feb 2010: 18,000,000+
23 Apr 2010: 19,000,000+
24 Apr 2010: 22,000,000+
14 May 2010: 23,000,000+
23 Jun 2010: 28,000,000+
23 Jul 2010: 31,000,000+
26 Oct 2010: 34,000,000+
 9 Jan 2011: 39,000,000+
31 Jan 2011: 45,000,000+
 1 Feb 2011: 64,000,000+
26 Apr 2011: 73,000,000+
27 Apr 2011: 78,000,000+
27 Aug 2011: 91,000,000+

Here is a plot of these numbers represented on a log y-axis.
> Daily Feature No feature posted > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 27 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 26 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 2 Svr Tstorm 36 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Fl Flood 28 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 62 Verified: 9 [14.5 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [91.9 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [16.0 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [8.2 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1229 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.56] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.85] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.13] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Mon Aug 29 11:01:00 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 11:01:00 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108291601.p7TG10FO004220@despam-12.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 29 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-28 | Title : Hurricane Irene | Date : 28 Aug 05:28 PM | Votes : Good: 10 Bad: 9 +---------------------------------------------- Hurricane Irene hit the east coast of the US this weekend bringing flooding rains and significant storm surge. The eye of the hurricane came ashore Saturday morning close to Morehead City, North Carolina. The featured chart is of one minute interval ASOS data from airport sensor in town. The one minute interval data was not available after about 11 AM local time. The traces nicely show the change of wind direction as the eye passes overhead along with the decrease in wind speed. This station was chosen for this plot as it had the lowest pressure reported among the automated sensors the IEM collects data from in the area. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 28 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 3 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 Svr Tstorm 43 0 | 0 0 0 4 15 | 2 Fl Flood 49 1 | 0 0 0 1 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 44 Verified: 21 [47.7 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [76.7 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [16.6 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [12.5 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1979 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.56] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.52] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.35] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Tue Aug 30 11:05:58 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:05:58 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108301605.p7UG5wwr030579@despam-10.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 30 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature No feature posted > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 29 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 7 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 65 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 3 Fl Flood 7 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 72 Verified: 34 [47.2 %] Reduction of Size Versus County Based [74.8 %] Average Perimeter Ratio [30.5 %] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [18.7 %] Average Storm Based Warning Size [1618 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better)[0.78] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.53] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.42] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From akrherz at iastate.edu Wed Aug 31 11:00:05 2011 From: akrherz at iastate.edu (daryl herzmann) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:00:05 -0500 Subject: IEM Daily Bulletin Message-ID: <201108311600.p7VG05Ku012629@despam-11.iastate.edu> Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 31 August 2011 > News No news is good news > Daily Feature +---------------------------------------------- http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/onsite/features/cat.php?day=2011-08-30 | Title : August Departures | Date : 30 Aug 05:59 AM | Votes : Good: 12 Bad: 4 +---------------------------------------------- The featured chart presents the largest accumulated precipitation departure during the month of August from the first of May. This chart attempts to show how wet or dry conditions were during the May to August period. The wet years of 1993, 2008, and 2010 immediately stand out along with the dry years of the 1930s. Since 1988, Ames has not seen a very dry growing season with the largest departures only approaching 5 inches. Some locations in Iowa are on the dry side of average this year. Rain is falling this morning over Iowa with some locations expected to pick up a much needed inch or so. > NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 30 Aug 2011 Summary +_________ By WFO ____________+ Watches Type US IA | ARX DVN DMX OAX FSD | US Tornado 0 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Svr Tstorm 0 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 Fl Flood 1 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 | N/A ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD > IEM Cow Report No Warnings Issued -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: