With high pressure in full control of Iowa's weather and not much for moisture to be found, a cloud was nowhere to be found in the sky on Tuesday. Combined with about the longest daylight time and most direct solar incidence angle, received solar radiation is about as maxed out as it can get! It is difficult to say if we could have set a solar radiation record yesterday as long term solar radiation observations are non-existent and model datasets have their own quirks / availability delays. An illustration of how clear it was can be found by the featured map of analyzed solar radiation totals for the day as derived from the NOAA HRRR model. The single color area over Iowa and slightly beyond is a tell-tale sign of not having any meaningful cloudiness to cause modeled radiation differences. You can see the impact of clouds in other parts of the country as solar radiation values drop off.

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