While parts of Iowa got several inches of snow on Sunday, a major warm-up is forecast for tomorrow. The National Weather Service says this is now Iowa’s fourth-warmest winter on record and fifth-warmest in the nation’s history.
Meteorologist Frank Boksa says while some Iowa cities didn’t get out of the 30s yesterday, they’ll be twice as warm or warmer tomorrow. “Far south, southwest, the 70s is sure in the cards,” Boksa says.
“We’ll see highs climbing well into the 60s across southern Iowa and around 60 across the north.” Enjoy it while it lasts, as Boksa says cold, rainy, possibly even snowy weather is expected to move back in by mid-week.
Clashing masses of hot and cold air can bring severe weather, but he says that’s not likely this time. “There is a pretty decent cold front that’s going to push through the area during the day Wednesday and into Wednesday evening,” Boksa says. “There is a little bit of instability along that frontal boundary. We may see some isolated thunder but we haven’t been talking about severe.”
He says Tuesday’s forecast is well out of the range of what would be considered the norm for an Iowa winter. “This time of year, our normal high is around 44 and normal low, mid-20s, 26 or so,” Boksa says. “So, we’ll be much warmer than that, about 20 degrees above our normal high for tomorrow.”
Among the records set in Des Moines this winter, something that’s never happened as long as records have been kept, the temperature didn’t dip below zero even once. Spring arrives in just over two weeks, March 20th.