Last week, the daily feature denoted the 25th Anniversary of the IEM! Even though the project is only 25 years old, a number of datasets have been back filled to dates prior than 2001 based on upstream archive availability. One of those back filled datasets are NEXRAD Mosaics. The featured image is a postage stamp plot showing a snapshot of the mosaic product at 8 PM each 30 June since 1997. It is interesting to visually and quickly compare the years and how the RADAR presentation looked on each. One item to note is that the IEM archive for this product goes back to 1995, but upstream archive availability is somewhat spotty prior to 1997, so that is why 1997 was chosen as the first year for this visualization.

Wednesday was yet another very warm day this week for most of Iowa, but showers and clouds kept northcentral Iowa cooler and the rest of the state was a couple degrees cooler than previous days. For Des Moines, the maximum heat index was 98°F, based on available hourly reports. The featured calendar presents the daily maximum heat index values for Des Moines since the first of April. The calendar nicely shows that prior to this week, there was not much to speak of for high index values with only two days in the 90s earlier in June. The summer time heat looks to stick around into next week.