Results tagged “severe weather” from DesMoinesIst

We were right. The storm reports from last night suggest it wasn't just tornado weather...it was hail and high wind weather, too. Damage was left behind. And there's a big, fat, ugly blotch over much of Iowa threatening new severe weather for tonight. We're being given another sporting chance of lots of new storms before the night is through. No thanks, Mother Nature. No thanks.

When it gets hot and humid outside (right now, it's 90° outside with a dewpoint in the seventies), a certain feeling outside tells long-term residents of this part of the country that things could get nasty. That's being confirmed by scientific observation today, with the Storm Prediction Center slapping a tornado watch over our neighbors just to the south and west. Conveniently, the local National Weather Service office here in Des Moines has begun testing an interactive weather briefing that goes into good detail about the conditions out there. It's a little more technical and a little less graphically pretty than what you'll get on radio or television, but it's candy for weather nerds.

The National Weather Service is saying that we might see funnel clouds today because of conditions in the atmosphere. There is a slight risk for severe weather today, but the funnel clouds they're talking are really less severe than the tornadoes we get with severe thunderstorms. An actual tornado just over a week ago produced mostly tree damage around Adel and Dallas Center.

It's Severe Weather Awareness Week in Iowa, with a special topic for each day: Flooding on Monday, severe thunderstorms today, tornadoes (with the statewide tornado drill) tomorrow, NOAA Weather Radio on Thursday, and preparedness on Friday.

There's a reason this event happens in early April: It's just slightly into tornado season in Iowa. It probably would be smarter to schedule the "awareness week" for just a little earlier in the year, like the end of March, because several of the state's worst tornado outbreaks have actually occurred in early April. But by pushing it earlier in the year, it might be overwhelmed by people's natural inclination to still be preoccupied with the end of winter weather...which, given last week's freak snowstorm, might be a challenge to overcome. But if we're going to practice a tornado drill, then it might be best to have that practice prior to any time we'd normally expect to get a twister.