Past IEM Features tagged: 2026
Rare Critical Fire Wx Risk
19 Feb 2026 05:30 AMThe Storm Prediction Center (SPC) is most widely known for issuing severe thunderstorm and tornado watches along with convective outlooks. SPC also has a fire weather program with associated fire weather outlooks. For Wednesday, SPC had much of Iowa highlighted with a critical fire weather risk due to strong winds, low humidity, and ample dry surface vegetation. The IEM maintains an unofficial archive of these outlooks and a GIS calculation indicates that the Wednesday critical risk covered more of Iowa than any previous such risk since the beginning of the archive in 2006. The featured chart attempts to show how rare these events are by plotting the yearly duration between the first and last such event that spatially overlapped Iowa by at least 5% of Iowa's area. The right hand side panel plots the number of such events per year. If you run this autoplot with a 50% overlap requirement, you will find only four such events over the period of record including yesterday. This was also the first such event during the month of February for Iowa.
Voting:
Good: 15
Bad: 0
Tags: fire 2026
Just 1.6" of Snow
17 Feb 2026 05:30 AMTwo months ago, the IEM Daily Feature denoted the fast start to the winter season accumulated snowfall for Des Moines. Snowfall totals since have been rather paltry for most of the state since. The featured chart presents the yearly snowfall totals between 1 January and 16 February. The 2026 total of just 1.6 inches is tied for fourth lowest over this period on record. Remarkably, a number of previous years are shown in the top 10 for largest accumulations (2021, 2024, and 2019)! Monday was yet another day of record high temperatures over Iowa and we have a few warm days yet to go before chances of accumulating snow return to the state.
Voting:
Good: 13
Bad: 0
Tags: 2026
Earliest 75+°F
11 Feb 2026 05:30 AMYesterday's daily feature highlighted the 13 degree smashing of the previous record high for 9 February for Sioux City. The high temperature was 75°F, which is easily the earliest temperature that warm on record for the site and is the subject of today's featured chart. The chart presents the first day each year with a high temperature of at least 75°F for Sioux City along with the subsequent number of days that year with as warm a daily high temperature. The right hand tables list out stats for this metric. Monday's record was 17 days earlier than the previous earliest reading found on 26 Feb 2024 and 1896! The 50th percentile for the first such date isn't until a number of days into April with a handful of years having to wait until May before reading such a warm high temperature! It was certainly remarkable early season warmth, which was helped by recently dry and snow free conditions.
Voting:
Good: 10
Bad: 0
Tags: 2026
60°F During First Week
08 Jan 2026 05:30 AMYesterday's daily Feature bemoaned that the really warm temperatures had mostly kept just to the west of Iowa. On Wednesday, a decent portion of the state got to experience very warm air for the first week of January with Des Moines setting a record high of 60°F. The featured chart presents the warmest daily high temperature each year for Des Moines during the first week of each year. Only four other years have seen such a warm temperature during this period with plenty of years not even seeing an above freezing temperature during it. Much closer to average temperatures are expected over the upcoming days, but nothing much for seasonally cold values.
Voting:
Good: 14
Bad: 0
Tags: 2026