With perhaps the worst of what winter in Iowa can offer for temperatures now behind us (famous last words), it is a good time to check in on accumulated hours at or below a given wind chill threshold temperature. By using IEM computed hourly values using the present day wind chill formula, the featured chart does that for Des Moines with this season to date's total compared with a simple climatology since 1972. Even with the recent bitter cold wind chill readings, accumulated hours are still running below average and even missing out on the coldest of readings below -32°F. To defend the optimism that the worst is behind us, the forecast next week has much warmer temperatures and we'll then sneak into March. For Des Moines, only a handful of days on record have seen wind chill values below even -25°F during the month of March.

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