Ah, June in Iowa, as I’m writing this we are experiencing another thunderstorm with quite a bit of rain. More rain to come this week. The picture above is a 180 view of a wall cloud just north of where I live. This particular cloud brought high winds and hail. This type of system can also produce tornadoes. Fun, fun, fun…
The Des Moines Register yesterday wrote that we are going to have more of the same:
Iowa weather will likely remain turbulent through the end of June thanks to a volatile boundary between warm southern air and cool northern air stalled over the state, experts say.
"Until the upper jet stream pattern changes in order to move that boundary north or south, we’re going to be vulnerable to these episodes of rainfall and thunderstorms," said Jeff Johnson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Johnston.
While we have gotten a lot of rain, fortunately it isn’t breaking any records.
The June average for Des Moines is 4.51 inches, State Climatologist Harry Hillaker said. As of 1 a.m. Friday, 6.91 inches had fallen this month. The record was set in 1881, when 15.79 inches fell. In 1993, 7.68 inches fell, and 13.45 inches fell in 2008, Hillaker said.
June is generally rainy, Hillaker and Johnson said. Warm air from the south pushes against cooler air from the north as summer sets in, creating an east-west line ideal for thunderstorms to develop.
"We’re pretty much right along the line. We’re a little bit on the warm side of it," Hillaker said. "It’s better than being on the cold side. That’s what happened in 1993, and to some extent in 2008."
The warm side is better because the ground dries more quickly when a hot day follows a heavy rainfall, Hillaker said.
So I’m hoping we’ll avoid the extent of flooding that Iowa saw in 1993 and 2008.
HT: The BeanWalker