(Radio Iowa) – If you heard the ping-ping of hail on your roof sometime last month, you were not alone. State Climatologist Justin Glisan says we had 130 severe hail reports in April, and it wasn’t limited to Iowa. “You look across the Midwest and even the southern states, monster hail across the southern states. We haven’t seen that size of hail on a widespread basis here in Iowa,” he says. There were many reports of hail big enough to do some damage.
“We did have 21 reports of two inch or more diameter hail across the state,” Glisan says. There were reports and pictures online of hail in some cases covered the ground and made it look like it had snowed. Glisan says certain weather conditions create the balls of ice that plop down on us. “That’s a reflection of the ingredients that come together for thunderstorms, less wind shear in the environment, less directional wind shear in the environment, so less rotation, more updrafts going higher up, and higher up updrafts produce more hail reports as opposed to tornadic activity,” Glisan says.
Glisan says this month might have less hail than what we just experienced in April. “The short-term outlooks that get us into the first half of May are showing a cooler signal and also a lean dry signal,” he says. “So a less active storm track, at least for the first two months, or first two weeks of the month.” The longer term picture is showing the potential for a quieter weather month overall.
“No clear signal on the temperature side. But what we are seeing is a lean towards drier conditions as well. So in terms of agriculture, looking like a good window for farmers to get the planters rolling on a widespread basis, perhaps less severe weather activity through May. This could mirror what we saw last May, the first May since 2013, in which we didn’t report a tornado in May,” Glisan says.
Glisan says farmers and everyone else will be happy if May ends up being a less active severe weather month.
