Iowa is thankfully a long and safe distance away from any land-falling Hurricanes. These powerful storms still impact our weather as shown by the featured chart. The chart presents relative to landfall averages for temperature departures and precipitation frequency for the five days before and five days after for Des Moines. The two charts partition these events by those hitting the US Gulf Coast and those hitting the US East Coast. The impact on precipitation appears to be negligible, but the temperature impact is more pronounced with gulf coast hurricanes seeing higher than average temperatures prior to landfall. The likely reason is an increase in downward motion and upper level ridging over our area with the approach of the gulf hurricane. Both of which tend to warm air temperatures. So it is somewhat interesting that the opposite (cooler than average temperatures) will be happening with Ian, but Ian is expected to hit western Florida and be moving eastward, which may be a part of the difference for our weather this time.

Voting:
Good = 10
Bad = 0

Tags:   hurricane