The warm temperatures on Monday gave way to late afternoon and early evening thunderstorms that brought hail to the Des Moines Metro and other places over Iowa. The featured map presents a summary of Local Storm Reports (LSR)s issued by NWS Des Moines for hail Monday evening. The largest hail report listed was 1.25" over Waukee (west Des Moines suburb). The autoplot tool that generates these maps is a downstream infographic associated with the raw NWS LSR Text (scroll to the bottom). The IEM has a number of ways to view and download LSR data, including the LSR App and data download. For a pro-tip, if you know the three character NWS office identifier, you can enter the combination of LSR and that identifier into the upper right search box and be taken to the most recently issued LSR from that office along with the map graphic like is featured today.

The featured map combines Weather Prediction Center seven day precipitation forecast with last week's Drought Monitor. The prediction paints a much needed wet start to April over Iowa. It is getting down to crunch time for precipitation deficits to be made up prior to the start of the growing season. It is also a good time to make up such deficits as it is still too early for farmers to plant crops and soils are no longer frozen. The only downside to this forecast is far western Iowa with totals that are not much higher than climatology this time of year, but something is better than nothing!

Yesterday's Daily Feature presented a considerable amount of needed precipitation forecast to fall during the first part of April. The first two days of April have lived up to that forecast with much of the state already over an inch. The featured map presents NOAA MRMS precipitation estimates for the first two days of April. These totals will be added to today with multiple rounds of showers and thunderstorms expected.

The National Weather Service Damage Assessment Toolkit (DAT) is a post-event storm survey platform that provides information from NWS damage surveys typically following tornado events. NWS Quad Cities / Davenport has completed a couple of such surveys following tornadoes during storms last week. The IEM offers a visualization of the "DAT tracks" that combines NWS Tornado Warnings along with an estimated track timing. The shown tornado tracked just southeast of Maquoketa. There are also Public Information Statements (PNS) associated with these DAT events with this PNS covering this featured tornado. The IEM also maintains a simple google email group that anybody can subscribe to receive emails when the NWS publishes such PNS damage survey results.

A very narrow band of snow developed overnight and dumped a stripe of an inch or more from about Omaha to Lamoni. The featured map will be updated later today, but totals will be difficult to accurately report as the snow yet falling this Tuesday morning will likely be quickly melting or transitioning to rain. Daytime snowfall events are difficult this late in the cold season as temperatures are typically too warm and even meager sunshine will warm ground surfaces above freezing. The largest report so far is a CoCoRaHS report of 5.5 inches at Creston!

The IEM website attempts to produce products and curate archives useful for research at ISU and beyond. One of the seemingly Internet unique archives is of National Weather Service Terminal Aerodome Forecasts (TAF)s. The NWS issues forecasts tailored for the aviation industry for many airports. These forecasts include wind speeds, visibility, and ceilings/cloud cover. The featured infographic attempts to summarize a TAF issued by NWS Des Moines for the Des Moines Airport from Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday afternoon. It shows strong winds and wind shear on Wednesday, but not much cloud concerns with the computed flight condition of VFR shown for most of the day. You can find archives of raw TAF text and processed data for download. There is also a more programatic TAF API service available as well.

The weekly US Drought Monitor will be released later this morning and likely show some improvements thanks to the heavy rains over the past week, but Iowa is still has a ways to go before being drought free. The driest areas of the state continue to be mostly confined to the SE, SW, and NW corners of Iowa. The featured map presents an IEM computation of the percentage of weeks since the start of 2025 that analyzed drought of at least "D1: Moderate Drought" was present. There's an interesting sliver of area from Creston to south of Des Moines that has avoided D1+ over this period! The near term forecast has plenty of significant rainfall chances, so hopefully continued drought busting can occur before the start of the 2026 growing season!