State climatologist Justin Glisan says the just-ended month of May was pretty close to the average in the record book.
“If we look at the statewide average — we were about 59 degrees — that’s about one degree below average,” Glisan says. He says southeast Iowa was cooler as that part of the state had above-average rainfall and more cloudy days. The rest of the state didn’t see anything out of the ordinary for May precipitation.
“Generally near average across the state. We are at about two-tenths of an inch below average with the preliminary numbers at about four inches of statewide rainfall,” according to Glisan. “And the interesting thing here is we didn’t have a lot of severe weather, and that has been the story for the meteorological spring as well.”
Glisan says the June indicators have changed a bit. “We are seeing an elevated signal for warmer than normal conditions across the northern half of the state — and then an equal chance of above, below, or near average,” he says. “On the temperature front in terms of June, that is a slight shift from the initial outlooks, where we had higher probabilities of being warmer. So, there is a slight trend toward near normal to cooler than average temperatures across the southern part of the state.”
He says there is not a clear signal right now about how the summer will play out because of the uncertainty of whether the La Nina will fade away. “But what we can say is if La Nina were to stick around in the summertime — we would have a drier than normal probability in the summertime months,” Glisan says. He says if La Nina moves out, then we could expect more precipitation.
(By Pat Powers, KQQC, Webster City)