Weather Service issues fire weather watch for parts of Iowa

Sioux City, Spencer and Storm Lake are included in a national weather service “fire weather watch” issued for Wednesday afternoon and evening. National Weather Service forecaster Jeremy Martin. They issue a “fire weather watch” when they expect a combination of factors including temps at 75 degrees or warmer, humidity 25-percent or lower, and sustained winds of 25 miles an hour or greater, because with all those combined, any fire that starts can get out of control fast. Martin says it’s been a couple of weeks since the region got any snow or rain. Last time they got more than a trace of precipitation was March 28th in Sioux City, with an inch and three-tenths rain late last month and a few weeks before that a storm that dropped a couple feet of snow. But Martin says that precipitation was isolated, and areas around Sioux City are even drier. He says a large area including southeast South Dakota, extreme northeast Nebraska, parts northwest Iowa, and a lot of southwest Minnesota at greatest risk of meeting all those fire-risk conditions on Wednesday afternoon. The list of counties included in this watch include: Buena Vista, Cherokee, Clay, Dickinson, Ida, Lyon, O’Brien, Osceola, Plymouth, Sioux, and Woodbury.