It’s No Halloween Prank, Snow Fell In Parts Of NW Iowa This Morning

Northwest Iowa — It’s neither a trick nor a treat as a surprise snowfall is blanketing parts of northwest Iowa this Halloween morning. A photo taken by an Iowa DOT snowplow camera in the seven o’clock hour showed flurries flying and snow on the ground. National Weather Service meteorologist Rod Donavon says they’re the state’s first flakes of the season, and October 31st is a little early for the first snowfall, but it’s not unprecedented.

Forecasters issued a host of advance warnings about Wednesday’s storm, how it might include hail, high winds, heavy rain and tornadoes, but there was no mention of possible snow. Was this unexpected?

Wednesday’s thunderstorms dropped temperatures some 30 degrees and also dropped plenty of rain.

Both Des Moines and Waterloo set rainfall records for the date, with each reporting over an inch-and-a-half, breaking records set in 1974. In our area, most rainfall totals were between a half an inch and an inch. At least five Iowa counties did have tornado warnings late Wednesday afternoon and evening, though Donavon says it doesn’t appear there were any twisters that reached the ground.

The most significant damage reported is on a Clarke County farmstead, with a barn destroyed and a grain bin damaged. Peak winds of 62 miles an hour were clocked in Appanoose and Lucas counties, while there were multiple hail reports, including golf ball-sized hail near Clear Lake. The new map out this morning from the US Drought Monitor shows almost 88 percent of the state in moderate to severe drought, but it’s based on data from before Wednesday’s storms.

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