The start to May has seen a mix of warm and chilly days, but the lack of humidity has been consistent so far. The featured chart presents a daily climatology of humidity for Ames as expressed by mixing ratio (ratio of water to air). The top panel shows the daily range of observed values with the red line showing the 2026 values to date. The bottom panel shows the daily departure from the simple average. The start of May has seen values near the bottom of the observed range with the departure from average being the largest so far this year. Such abundant dry air is not conducive to precipitation, but the very wet April and cooler air temperatures have limited any substantial impacts so far. While the near term forecast does have precipitation chances, totals do not appear to be all that substantial.