This February has been a roller coaster for temperature as persistent flow aloft from the northwest has kept Iowa within the battle ground of air masses. The featured chart presents some air temperature metrics for Ames during February. The top panel shows temperature percentiles by hour based on period of record data. The bottom panels show a time series of percentile values based on per hour populations for the month. The side panel at the bottom shows a histogram of hourly reports by decile. The roller coaster is certainly obvious by the lower panel and the histogram shows that we have spent more time at the extremes than in the middle this month so far. The forecast for the next week continues this wild ride with some days having high temperatures well below freezing and others well above.

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