Iowans who parked outside during Wednesday’s heavy thunderstorms are finding their vehicles now look like they’ve been dunked in mud.
National Weather Service meteorologist Alexis Jimenez says those dirty smudges and brown polka-dots have far-away origins, thanks to the winds of the massive storm, which topped off above 70 miles an hour.
“With it being so powerful, it pulls up a lot of air from the south,” Jimenez says, “and usually we think about moisture coming from the south, but also it brought in some of the dust and dirt from places like New Mexico and Texas all the way up into the Midwest.”
There’s plenty of grit and sand in the gunk, too, which she says traveled nearly a thousand miles from the deserts of the southwestern U.S.
“Truly, it is just how powerful the winds were with that system,” Jimenez says. “The moisture in the air just moved this way from the south and that dirt just continued to get lofted higher up. And as you go higher up in the air, the winds get faster, so it can travel a lot farther, and then once the rain started to form, it’s sort of just taking all that dirt out of the sky.”
With sunny skies and highs back in the 40s and 50s, Iowa car washes should likely brace for a business boost.