May was a quiet month for severe weather

The severe weather sirens haven’t gotten much of a workout in the early part of spring in Iowa. State Climatologist Harry Hillaker says there’ve been few reasons to sound the alarm. He says it’s been a fairly quiet year, and while he doesn’t have the official total, he says there’ve been eight to 10 tornadoes thus far. He says there hasn’t been much severe weather or much damage with what we’ve had. Hillaker says May isn’t always this calm. He says we’re almost halfway through the severe weather season and thus far there’ve not been any “headline grabbers” when it comes to the weather. Frost was more of a concern early in the month than tornadoes, and Hillaker says the cool weather is one of the things that’s kept big thunderstorms from breaking loose. He says that’s partly the reason, as when we’ve had the above-normal temperatures usually associated with severe weather, things have been on the dry side, and so we haven’t had a lot of thunderstorm activity. Hillaker says it’s likely we’ll see a few good thunder boomers this month. He says June is typically along with May is usually one of our biggest months of the year. “Just based on how quiet things have been thus far, June’ll probably be a more active month for severe weather than we’ve seen thus far this year.” Hillaker says June is expected to be about normal when it comes to temperatures and and precipitation.