(Radio Iowa) – State Climatologist, Justin Glisan, says the latest Climate Prediction Center outlook for June shows an elevated signal for below-average temperatures. “So typically during the warm season, and meteorological summer, which we’re in now, when we do see a cold signal that typically is coupled with a wetter signal, so we’ll just have to see how the month pans out,” he says, “but the expectation is, with these cooler temperatures, we’d get rainfall during the day more cloud cover at night.” Glisan says we’d see impacts on both sides for temperatures.

“Overnight lows would be a little warmer and our daytime highs would be a little cooler if that does come to fruition,” Glisan says. He says the indication now is things wouldn’t be cooler throughout the summer. Now if we look at June July and August in terms of temperature and precipitation as well we’re seeing an elevated signal for warmer temperatures and then for much of the state slightly elevated chances for drier than normal conditions,” according to Glisan. He says we normally see a drop in precipitation in July anyway. Glisan says there is one thing that could help keep the drought conditions from getting as bad as they did last summer.

“We are working with more subsoil moisture and that does act to keep temperatures slightly lower than normal so we do have a few things that are working to our benefit right now,” Glisan says. The drought conditions last year expanded from western Iowa into north-central and central Iowa as we moved deeper into summer.