The year 2024 wrapped up as one of Iowa’s worst in history for severe weather.
State climatologist Justin Glisan says among the many incidents, a record was set for the most-ever tornadoes to touch down in Iowa during a calendar year.
“One hundred 31 tornadoes, 1 EF-3, 2 EF-4s, of course, the Greenfield (tornado), a high-end EF-4 with five fatalities,” Glisan says. “Lots of wind reports. Hail reports across the state, 31 events in which we saw two inches or larger, and then we had another derecho on July 15th.”
That July derecho was devastating, but wasn’t nearly as severe as the one that blasted across Iowa in August of 2020, which caused some $ 11 billion damage in Iowa and four other states.
After several previous years of drought, parts of Iowa had record rainfall during 2024, which brought unprecedented results.
“We had historic flooding in northwestern Iowa,” Glisan says. “Looking at return periods, you wouldn’t see something like that probabilistically in 1,000 years.” Hundreds of homes were lost to the flooding, while dozens of Iowa counties were declared state and federal disaster areas — between the flooding and tornadoes.
Glisan says the unusual weather events continued into the latter part of the year.
“When we get into fall, the driest September on record, and then the 14th wettest November. So we started off fall dry, then we flipped back to wet,” Glisan says. “Overall, if you look at the 2024 statistics, preliminarily, the fifth warmest year in 152 years of records, and near the 30th wettest for the state.”
As for what’s ahead, Glisan says long-range forecasts call for bitter cold for perhaps another two weeks, with high temperatures peaking 20 degrees colder than normal. He says the forecast models are still uncertain as to how much precipitation we may get.
(Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City contributed to this story.)