***Official 2025 Weather Thread***
- Thread starter wxman1
- Start date
November 12, 2005. F2 damage and one minor injury on the west side of Ames in Ontario and the northwest tip of Ames. Happened on the same day a more devastating F3 tornado hit Stratford just to the NW of town.
Thank you, got into the site now.
And holy balls, see you all in a week. This site is an INCREDIBLE worm hole.
Yeah another tool I like (if only to alleviate my tornado anxiety living in central IA at least a bit) is the Iowa State University mesonet, which is a one of a kind tool that records all sorts of meteorological information.
Iowa Environmental Mesonet
Iowa Environmental Mesonet of Iowa State University
The automated data plotting is a massive rabbit hole
Personally my favorite is the UGC or Polygon SBW Statistics for Watch/Warning/Advisory because it shows the statistics of different types of severe weather watches and warnings over a timeframe or averaged.
Here's the yearly average of tornado warnings in Iowa, by drawn polygon, from 2000 to 2025:
I've looked at this before and knock on wood it kinda lines up with what I always felt growing up where I did and now where I live - that the river disrupted storms crossing from Dubuque and we didn't get many tornadoes touching down in the hills (lots of straight line wind storms!!) and the lakes now disrupt where I live and the worst stays southwest or southeast. It's missing one from the mid 90s though, I remember seeing it on the ground to the north of where I lived. Nothing matches in the map.
Monday night is the ISU sports version of the Oscars.
www.instagram.com
ISU Student-Athletes on Instagram: "Mark your calendars, the O.S.C.A.R.S. are April 28th! This year’s theme is SNEAKER BALL! So rock your sneakers with your red-carpet attire and get ready for a night of celebration! #SAAC #SneakerBall"
164 likes, 0 comments - isuathletes on March 7, 2025: "Mark your calendars, the O.S.C.A.R.S. are April 28th! This year’s theme is SNEAKER BALL! So rock your sneakers with your red-carpet attire and get ready for a night of celebration! #SAAC #SneakerBall".
www.instagram.com
New NWS Des Moines forecast discussion:
forecast.weather.gov
In non-meteorologist speak:
-There will likely be clouds throughout the day Monday, but they could get blown out in the afternoon, so we could see some sun in the afternoon- let's hope this doesn't happen.
-Right now it doesn't seem likely we get supercells (scattered thunderstorms) in the afternoon (around 3-5 PM).
-If we do this is the biggest threat for big tornadoes.
-The cold front will move through Iowa in the evening (around 7-10 PM into probably the overnight).
-This will mainly be a large hail threat, with some smaller spin-up tornadoes in a long line of storms.
-Still a lot of uncertainty around Monday
National Weather Service
In non-meteorologist speak:
-There will likely be clouds throughout the day Monday, but they could get blown out in the afternoon, so we could see some sun in the afternoon- let's hope this doesn't happen.
-Right now it doesn't seem likely we get supercells (scattered thunderstorms) in the afternoon (around 3-5 PM).
-If we do this is the biggest threat for big tornadoes.
-The cold front will move through Iowa in the evening (around 7-10 PM into probably the overnight).
-This will mainly be a large hail threat, with some smaller spin-up tornadoes in a long line of storms.
-Still a lot of uncertainty around Monday
Certainly possible but uncertainty is still too high at this point, if the high resolution models either don't convect much in Iowa or there's a lot of morning cloud cover I don't think the risk will be that much higher- my guess is Day 1 10% hatched if we're lucky, D1 15% hatched if we're kinda unlucky, D1 30% high risk if the models all converge on a big outbreak (discrete supercells firing, no cloud cover, more forcing, more helicity).
Tornadoes especially violent tornadoes tend to exhibit deviant motion due to the high amount of wind shear in the atmosphere- this is why tornado warning polygons are big boxes that can span an entire county even though 99.9% of people in the box won't even be near the tornado in a practical case.
This website has the Woodward tornado of 2005 missing town completely to the north and west.
They also have neat pictures and videos of past tornado events.Yeah another tool I like (if only to alleviate my tornado anxiety living in central IA at least a bit) is the Iowa State University mesonet, which is a one of a kind tool that records all sorts of meteorological information.
Iowa Environmental Mesonet
Iowa Environmental Mesonet of Iowa State Universitymesonet.agron.iastate.edu
The automated data plotting is a massive rabbit hole
Personally my favorite is the UGC or Polygon SBW Statistics for Watch/Warning/Advisory because it shows the statistics of different types of severe weather watches and warnings over a timeframe or averaged.
Here's the yearly average of tornado warnings in Iowa, by drawn polygon, from 2000 to 2025:
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