The National Weather Service sent a team into southwest Iowa this morning (Thursday) to look for any damage to trees, crops and buildings from last night’s two possible tornadoes. Meteorologist Van DeWald, in the weather service’s Omaha office, says the severe weather rumbled through both Harrison and Pottawattamie counties.

“We had a pretty strong storm that developed near Persia, Iowa, and then moved southwest toward Underwood,” DeWald says. “We do have reports of a couple of tornado touchdowns. We are sending out a survey crew to look at that to see if it’s one tornado or two and to find the beginning and ending points.” Persia and Underwood are about 16 miles apart and he says the area was pelted with large hail during the storm which struck about 6 P-M.

“I don’t believe there’s any injuries and there is some damage out there but it seems to be mostly to trees,” DeWald says. “I haven’t heard of a lot of structural damage at this time.” Iowans will need to keep an eye to the sky as more severe weather is possible within a matter of several hours.

“We do have a cold front coming down into the area,” DeWald says. “That could trigger some thunderstorms throughout the day today. Some of them could be strong, especially this afternoon into early evening.”

(Radio Iowa)

Some relatively cool conditions have settled over Iowa to end the month of June, similar to the way the month started. But, State Climatologist Harry Hillaker says it was extremely hot nearly every other day. “Overall, it’ll probably end up being just a little bit shy of being four degrees warmer than a typical June, which may not sound like a lot, but we’d probably have to go back to 1988 to find a June that averaged warmer than this one did,” Hillaker says.

The average High in Atlantic thru the 29^th, was 87.4-degrees, which was 4.7-degrees warmer than normal. Statewide, the average temperature for June will wind up being close to 74 degrees, also about 4 degrees warmer than normal.

Statewide, the average temperature for June will wind up being close to 74 degrees. Hillaker expects this will likely be the 11th-hottest June in Iowa in 144 years of records. In Des Moines, temperatures reached the 90s on 13 of June’s 30 days. “We had only one location in the state that managed to get to triple digits during June and that was the town of Little Sioux, between Council Bluffs and Sioux City on the Nebraska border. They hit an even 100 degrees on June 11,” Hillaker says.

The average low for the month of June in Atlantic (through June 29^th, was 61.5-degrees, which is 2.7-degrees warmer than normal. Rainfall amounts over the month varied widely, with the heaviest totals in northeast Iowa.

“Some areas up there had well above normal precipitation for the month. A few places are over 10 inches of rainfall for June, which would be roughly about double the usual amount,” Hillaker says. Other areas of the state received very little rain in June. “The west-central and southeast corners of the state saw less than an inch of rain for the full month,” Hillaker says. “June is usually the most reliable month of the year for rainfall, so to get less than an inch is quite unusual,” Hillaker said.

In Atlantic, thru June 29^th, we received just eight-tenths of an inch of rain. Normally, we would have received 4.98-inches. The U.S. Drought Monitor indicates “moderate drought conditions” exist over southeast Iowa and most of southern Iowa is abnormally dry.

(Radio Iowa/KJAN weather data)