(Radio Iowa) — We’ve heard for weeks about the high risk for more flooding in Iowa once the snow starts to melt this spring, but one forecaster says all of that water in the soil may actually help bring about a cooler summer. Doug Kluck, the region’s climate service director at the National Weather Service in Kansas City, says the saturated soil will prevent much in the way of rapid heating.

“It’s hard to get hot if we have a lot of soil moisture,” Kluck says. “Once the plants and things start growing and evapotranspirating, my famous word, once that starts happening more and more, yes, some of that moisture gets sucked out of the soils, but that moisture also goes into the air and makes it harder to warm up and keeps thing relatively cool.”

While some climate models are hinting at a very warm weather pattern developing by mid-summer, Kluck says drought chances will stay low. “In some of those places that are super-wet right now, chances of them going into a really bad drought are lower than normal,” he says, “and chances of them having a hotter-than-normal summer are lower than normal as of right now as well.”

Some Iowa communities saw the flooding start last March along with repeated bouts of high water throughout 2019. A number of residents in parts of southwest Iowa, in the Missouri River valley, haven’t been able to return to their homes in ten months.