April wetter and warmer than normal

DES MOINES — State Climatologist Justin Glisan  says April brought the showers the state needs.

“We’re actually about eight-tenths of an inch above average and particularly wet across southeastern Iowa and northwestern Iowa, where we’ve seen drought removal and drought improvement,” Glisan says. April was also warmer than normal. “Two degrees above the normal average that we would expect for April,” he says. The April average temperature is around 48 degrees.

Glisan says the storms that brought the rain also gave us some severe weather. “Almost 40 tornadoes reported across the state and that’s approaching the April record,” he says.

Glisan says the immediate outlook for this month shows the same trends as April. “We’re trending towards warmer to near normal temperatures, but we’re also seeing a wetter signal for the first two weeks of May,” Glisan says. “And May being the second wettest month of the year for Iowa climatologically, we could expect a lot of thunderstorm potential, and a lot of rainfall potential across the state.”

Glisan says the rain is welcome to combat the drought, but farmers also need a little dry time to plant. “We do need to get planted, we do need to get that field work completed, and we’ve been wet over the last two weeks,” he says.

Corn and soybean planting were slightly ahead of schedule heading into this week.