By Dar Danielson (Radio Iowa)

State climatologist Justin Glisan says the rain across the state this week helped bump the month of October down the dry weather record book.

“Up through the 29th we were about in the top five driest Octobers with 152 years of records,” he says. “And this would be the continuation that we saw in September, the driest September on record.” He says much of the state got some rainfall to impact the average for October, which still ended up below normal. “We were just under two inches. And again, most of that fell on the 29th through the 30th,” Glisan says, “and that’s about eight tenths of an inch below average for the state. Driest conditions that we saw across the state were in the northwest corner, anywhere from an inch to two inches below average.” The storms that brought the late October rain also brought in some cold weather — including some snowflakes in northern Iowa.

Glisan says the lack of moisture impacted overall temperatures. “Almost six degrees above average. So this is near the top 20th warmest Octobers is on record. The difference that we see in the temperature is that with this dry air that we saw for much of the month, very low dew points. So we warmed up during the day, but we also cooled off appreciably at night. We were near or below average on a lot of the nights across the state,” Glisan says.

Glisan says the early indicators for November are showing the potential for above average temperatures, with a potential for more precipitation.