On Tuesday, the IEM Daily Feature was a plot of average coverage of 35+ dbZ radar reflectivity averaged by day of the year. Today's feature displays the average coverage by week of the year and hour of the day. The top image being for the continental US and the bottom image for approximately just Iowa. For the CONUS, the peak time is clearly in the late afternoon hour during the summer, this represents the storms driven by the heating by the sun. For Iowa, there is a much different story to tell with the vast majority of peak coverages occurring during the early morning hours. These storms are thunderstorm complexes that roll into the state from the high plains and are feed by a phenomenon known as the low level jet.

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Tags:   nexrad