The first snowfall of the season for Iowa brought a number of inches of snowfall over northwestern Iowa on Saturday. These early season snowfalls tend to be difficult to measure and report as soil temperatures are well above freezing yet. This event also mostly fell during the daytime hours, so pavement temperatures where plenty warm to melt much of the falling snow as well. So the featured map is a bit rough, but the general pattern shown fits available reports over the past 24 hours. The largest total reported was around five inches near Spencer. The first significant cold air of the season also arrived for the weekend with air temperatures and wind chill values both well below freezing. And finally for accounting, the IEM produces these snowfall maps derived from available NWS COOP, Local Storm Reports, and CoCoRaHS observations when snowfall totals of at least two inches are reported and/or significant winter weather impacts are observed. The IEM has been generating these maps for 16 winter seasons now! These maps are generated from Autoplot 207, but get some manual quality control to help produce a refined analysis.

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