Iowa’s weather during the first month of 2018 featured a lot of extremes. State Climatologist Harry Hillaker says the statewide average temperature of 18.9 degrees was just slightly (1/2-degree) colder than normal for a January in Iowa, but it was bitterly cold over the first half of the month and unseasonably warm over the second half. “Temperatures were as high as 60 degrees at Ottumwa and Keosauqua on January 26 and down as low as 28-below zero back on January 2 at several places across northern Iowa – among them Sioux City, Webster City and Sheldon,” Hillaker said.

Here in Atlantic, the average high for the month of January was 29. The average low was 9. The coldest day here in Atlantic, -27 on January 1^st. On New Year’s Day morning, a wind chill reading of 50-BELOW zero was recorded in Storm Lake. Conversely, there eight days during the month where the temperature climbed to at least 50 ABOVE zero somewhere in the state. It was a slightly wetter than normal January with a statewide average precipitation total of 1.03 inches. “A great majority of that precipitation came in the form of rain and most of that came out of one storm system between the 21st and 23rd of the month,” Hillaker said.

The warmest day during the month of January, in Atlantic, was on the 26^th, when we reached 54.

The statewide average for snowfall over the month was 4.4 inches – 3.3 inches less than usual for a January in Iowa. Most of the state’s snow fell in a blizzard that blasted northwest Iowa “Places like Spirit Lake, Sibley and Estherville had roughly 18 inches of snow for the month…about two-thirds of that coming in one storm centered on January 22nd,” Hillaker said. In Atlantic, we received a scattered total of 4-inches of snow, along with periods of mixed precipitation in the form of hail, sleet and freezing drizzle. Melted down, all the precipitation equated to three-quarters of an inch of rain.

Much of the southeast half of the state received just one or two inches of snow in January. “In some areas, there was not much precipitation at all, especially in the far southeast corner where a number of places were under a-half-inch of total amount of moisture for the month,” Hillaker said. “Places like Ottumwa, Fairfield and Mount Pleasant were very dry during the month of January.”

(Radio Iowa)