Rainfall in the state had a definite north-south pattern in the month of November. State Climatologist Harry Hillaker says there are some dramatic differences across the state.
“Basically the farther northwest you go, the drier November was, however the southeast part of the state, especially the extreme southeast corner, had a very wet month,” Hillaker explained. He cites Keokuk as an example, where they had over six inches of rain, triple the normal amount and was the third wettest November there in 140 years of records.
On the other hand, Hillaker says Sioux Center in northwest Iowa had its fourth driest November on record. The imbalance north and south averaged out when viewed as a whole. Hillaker says the statewide average of 2.11 inches averages out to just five-hundreths above normal. “It definitely wasn’t distributed very evenly over the state,” Hillaker says.
Hillaker says the year overall is drier than normal which is “a major contrast” to the previous four years (2007-2010) where we saw wetter than normal years. November continued the moderate trend for temperatures.
He says temperatures ran about 4 to 4.5 degrees warmer than normal, which like October, he says was relatively mild. Hillaker says the fall as a whole was warm, with September being relatively cool, but that was made up by a warmer October and November.
With one month remaining in the calendar year, Hillaker says things don’t look too out of the ordinary.”The very beginning of the year, the first couple of months were actually well below normal,and so overall the annual average temperature was just a little bit above normal, not really by that much, but a warmer year-to-date thus far,” he said.
As for rainfall, things were “realtively wet” in the first half of the year and so far the second half it has been drier, which makes things come out very close to average. Hillaker says the current weather pattern suggests a little warmer than normal December, with nothing out of the ordinary for precipitation.