(Radio Iowa) – State Climatologist Justin Glisan says the heavy snow we got this weekend bumped up what had been a dry November. “If we take the rain we had and then combine that with the liquid equivalent of the snowfall that we had at the end of the month, preliminarily we’re coming out at at about one-point-six (1.6) inches of moisture and that’s about a quarter inch below average,” he says. Glisan says the preliminary average snowfall is eight inches for November, which puts the month into record territory.

“If that holds, around that eight inch mark, it’s about five-and-a-half inches above average, which would put us in the top ten snowiest Novembers in 138 years of records,” Glisan says, “which is kind of astounding, giving that it was basically snowfall over 36 hours. So it was a very potent system that came through.” The average November temperature is 37 degrees, and early on it looked like we’d be well above that.

“Mid-month we had temperatures in the 60s and 70s and then we kind of nosed nose dove towards the end of the month. Overall though, we were about three degrees above average for November,” he says. Glisan says there’s good and bad to having a snowpack. One of the good things is a shallow frost depth. “And a more shallow frost depth gives us a higher potential as we melt in late winter and early spring of infiltrating that melted snow pack into the profile versus it running off,” he says.

He says getting more runoff into the ground will help those areas that have been dryer than normal. There’s also a negative to having snow on the ground. “Of course having a snowpack on the ground also produces colder temperatures, so you know, depending on what you like, I think we have a variety out there for everybody,” he says. The forecast is calling for varying amounts of snow and colder temperatures this week to keep that snowpack in place.