(Area) State Climatologist Justin Glisan has put the final numbers together on the 2021 Weather Summary.
Of course the biggest event of the year came December 15th with over 40 tornadoes across the state and a serial derecho. Glisan explains a serial derecho means it had a path length of at least 240 miles with 55 mile per hour gusts along a majority of the path. “Luckily we didn’t have foliage on the trees, we didn’t have row crops out in the field, so we didn’t have that much damage to urban canopies as we did in Cedar Rapids during August 10th, but definitely this day will be studied for decades and is a very historic day for the state of Iowa.”
It was a quiet year for severe weather minus two major outbreaks on December 15th and July 14th. Those two dates produced 68 tornadoes. “So to have the first and the fourth highest tornado outbreaks on Iowa record along with a 30-50 year D3 drought and a serial derecho, the first of which in December to ever occur in the Unites States, 2021 was a pretty active year.”
The past year also stood out for its warmth. “Temperatures are not that variable month-to-month so we don’t see a substantial plus or minus from the average. If we look at the 2021 average right now we are right at about 50 degrees for the year and that would be almost two degrees above average. If we look at the historical rankings going back 150 years this will be a top 20 warmest year on record.”
October precipitation totals helped recover from what had been a dry first nine months of the year. The state received 92% of the expected annual total in precip at 33.5.”
