The Iowa Environmental Mesonet (IEM) collects environmental data from cooperating members with observing networks. The data are stored and made available on this website.
Precip near Severe Weather
Posted: 21 May 2026 05:30 AM, Views: 314After a very dry start to May, this past weekend saw numerous rounds of severe weather that also brought much needed rainfall. Such is the conundrum this time of year, needed and significant spring season rains often come with thunderstorms that are sometimes severe. The featured chart attempts to look into how much precipitation is associated with severe weather by totaling up one minute interval precipitation totals from the Des Moines airport when either a severe thunderstorm or tornado warning is activate for the airport. The left two panels report the precipitation partitioning percentages during, within an hour, and outside of severe warnings. The upper right panel shows the frequency of a given one minute intensity happening during a severe weather warning. The bottom right panel is a bit of a downer, but denotes how much of the one minute precipitation is likely missing within the one minute observations (long story, but NCEI's collection and distribution of one minute data has become very unreliable). So the overall percentages are not that large with precipitation totals near 10%, but it certainly accounts for a good portion of the most intense rainfall totals.
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Previous Years' Features
2024Day 2 Moderates
2020Decorah Wins
2018May Clouds
2015Just 50
2014Model insistence
2010Severe totals
2009Two warm days
2004Perpetual Slight
2002Drying Out
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Soil Temperatures
Data from the Iowa State Soil Moisture Network is found on this website and daily soil temperature averages are used to produce the highlighted analysis.




