While the fall to date minimum temperature for the Des Moines Airport has been 34 degrees, the Ames Airport has reported 28 degrees on two separate days. The two airports are only separated by a county's distance, but their micro-climates differ. The featured chart compares the yearly average high and low temperature for the two sites. Please note that this type of comparison is often difficult due to station location and report changes over the years. The Ames site has only recently used data from the airport weather station and is still labelled as the ISU Ag Farm (confusing eh?) Putting that aside, it is interesting to note that while some years had a warmer average high for Ames, the low was always warmer for Des Moines. You can generate this chart for comparing other sites in the Midwest that the IEM tracks.

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Tags:   ames   desmoines