Iowa’s state climatologist can’t find much that was unusual about the month of October. Harry Hillaker says it’s normally the month with the widest variation in our weather. Both temp and rainfall as far as statewide averages go, though this year he says temps averaged barely one degree warmer than normal and rainfall was half-an-inch less. He says it was right about in the middle of the spectrum. Of course, it depended on where in Iowa you were measuring. As has been the case for the last several months, rainfall varied — from only a quarter-inch in the Omaha Council Bluffs area, way below normal there, to almost six and-a-half inches near Burlington, nearly double what they typically get. The extremes for the month just ended came at unpredictable times, according to Hillaker, who works in the state agriculture department tracking weather trends. Our warmest temp for the month came just last Friday with 83 at Shenandoah and Red Oak, and one of the coldest, 24 in Sioux City, came back on October second. Hillaker says while it may seem like a wide swing, the change from 23 to 83 degrees actually is less than the temperature range we often see in October. And in case you missed it, we got our first taste of snow. Hillaker says we usually get our first snow of the year in October and there was a little snow in northern Iowa around the middle of the month, though even more people there didn’t see it happen.