Thanks to a powerful push of warm and moist air on Thursday, temperatures soared and topped out at 61 degrees for Des Moines, which is two degrees short of a record. This high temperature was more than two standard deviations warmer than the average high (two sigma). The featured chart presents the combination of two sigma days against the average high and low temperature for December. The green symbols and lines are the values for 2010. The symbols are offset slightly for readability. The chart shows what one may intuitively expect, that cold months have a number of very cold days and vice versa. This year shows up as a somewhat rare combination of having a below average month along with an above two sigma warm day (yesterday).

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