Hurricane Idalia roared onshore Wednesday morning as a strong category 3 storm. For us Iowans, it is often difficult to appreciate the size of such storms when they are over geographies that are unfamiliar to us in scale. So the featured map takes the Tallahassee NEXRAD data at landfall and transposes the data as it was coming from the Des Moines NEXRAD location. So we find a system covering about two thirds of the state and whose eyewall covers a couple of counties. After the Derecho of 2020, comparisons were made to a hurricane and that Iowans got to experience what a hurricane is like. While this is somewhat a fair comparison for winds over a short period of time, this neglects the often more impactful storm surge, extreme rainfall totals, and winds that are sustained for much longer periods than the 30 minutes or so during the Derecho.

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Tags:   hurricane