A brief and very intense rainfall event was captured by the Mason City airport weather station on July 4th. The featured chart presents one minute interval precipitation reports between 4:45 and 5:30 PM. Over just 10 minutes between 5 and 5:10 PM, 1.16" of precipitation was reported! This is about as extreme of a rate that has been observed over Iowa. Thankfully, this rate was not sustained over an hour for a single location as it would equate to over 6.5"! Additionally, you can see an instantaneous rate of over 10 inches per hour was found with the one minute data. This is the time of year for such high precipitation rates as a warmer troposphere can hold more water vapor and less cloud ice induction increases precipitation efficiency. Storms also move less quickly, which helps to isolate precipitation totals further.

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Tags:   heavyrain