After a summer of sweltering heat, Mason City saw a new record low set on Sunday of 19 degrees, breaking the record that stood since 1896. Ottumwa also set a new record low with 25 on Sunday, Atlantic broke a record low at 15 on Saturday, while Waterloo tied a record low on Sunday at 24 degrees.
Meteorologist Kevin Deitsch, at the National Weather Service, says a warm-up is coming as temperatures are going from below-normal on Sunday to above-normal today. Highs should be back in the upper 60s and lower 70s today but another front will be moving in tonight into Tuesday that will drop highs back into the 50s for Tuesday and Wednesday.
If you still have sprinklers running, switch them off, as Deitsch says all of Iowa has now seen temperatures below the freezing mark of 32 degrees. “The whole state has seen a hard freeze, actually, so we are done with the plants, unfortunately,” he says. Some areas of the state may still have green plants growing if the temperature didn’t fall below freezing for long.
Some areas of the country got hit with snow over the weekend, including Colorado, North Dakota and Minnesota. Deitsch says Iowa won’t likely be seeing the white stuff anytime soon, but he wouldn’t commit to a guess on our first measureable snowfall.
He says, “It doesn’t look like it’s going to be in the next week and after that, it’s hard to say.” Iowa has seen many October snows but the average date of the first snowfall in the state is around November 10th.