After a number of rounds of snow flurries last week that did not produce much more than a trace of reported depth, a slightly more substantial area of snow moved across Iowa on Sunday with a few locations reporting just over an inch of new snowfall. There was also an area of freezing rain during the day on Sunday over northeastern Iowa that made this event more than just a nuisance snowfall. We will have another chance of light snowfall tonight and then a warm-up is forecast later in the week with temperatures finally returning to above freezing levels.
A compact system dumped a quick inch or two of snowfall over eastern Iowa on Monday evening and into early Tuesday morning. The featured map analysis of available NWS and CoCoRaHS reports shows the largest snowfall totals around two inches found from Cedar Rapids to Davenport. These maps attempt to only show areas that received measurable snowfall, so trace amounts of snowfall are not included. Temperatures are still forecast to nicely warm later this week and any of the meager recently accumulated snowfall over the state will soon be gone.
The first month of 2026 is already finished and so it is a good time to check on some metrics for the month. The month featured the first half being rather mild and the second half being rather chilly, so perhaps the difference between the warmest high and coldest low for the month was exceptional? The featured chart presents the range between those values for each January on record for Sioux City. The warmest high for 2026 was 63°F and coldest low was -13°F, which makes for a range of 76°F. The panels show each year's max high (top), min low (middle) and range between the two (bottom). A simple period of record average is plotted for both along with a trailing 30 year average. The 2026 range was not very exceptional thanks to the minimum low being just about average.
The winter season snowfall started off quickly during late November and into December, but has slowed considerably since for parts of the Midwestern US. The featured map presents current season to date snowfall departures are reported from NWS CLImate reporting sites. Negative values colored in red denote accumulated snowfall departures below average for the season. Not all of Iowa is indicated below average with Waterloo and Dubuque both slightly above. Accumulating snow does not appear likely over the coming days as much warmer temperatures are forecast into next week.
The warm weather on Thursday felt amazing with all of Iowa enjoying above freezing air temperatures for the first time since mid January. For Waterloo, the high of 38°F was the first temperature above freezing since 16 January, making for a 19 day streak of sub freezing temperatures. The featured chart presents the longest such streaks each cold season with the top 20 largest listed out to the side. A simple long term average is around 16 days, so the recently ended streak was not too much larger than average. The top two longest streaks are certainly notable as the winters of 1978 and 1979 were both rather brutal for Iowa. This year's streak was the longest since 2007 though. Unfortunately, there is still time this winter season to accumulate a longer streak as one of the top 20 events is shown to stretch well into March, but fortunately the near term forecast has plenty of warm weather first prior to potentially starting any such streak anew.
