The National Weather Service issues Local Storm Reports (LSR)s, which relays to the public preliminary reports they have received or collected. These reports can include observed wind gusts, storm damage, hail, tornadoes, and so on. The NWS often times will relay received reports of snowfall as events unfold. The IEM collects these, makes a downloadable archive available and generates a number of products using this data feed. For instance, Autoplot 207 will generate map analyses of these reports and you'll find such an analyses on the IEM homepage during snow fall events. One item of cautionary note for using such data is the subject of today's featured map. It presents the number of snowfall LSRs by county over the past three years or so. The more urban counties are immediately noticeable with the Des Moines Metro and Cedar Rapids/Iowa City area having much larger report numbers than immediate surrounding counties. This general issue exists for other LSR report types like tornadoes, hail, and wind as reporting frequency will increase as the population increases!

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Tags:   lsr