May...Above Average US Temps?!

Are you kidding me? This is amazing to those of us who are wondering if we will have a real summer. (((See Carlson's Story in the Register Wednesday)))

There is a cool wind blowing again over Iowa and now the climate numbers have reached the weather desk of TV 13. It seems the United States was above average for temperatures last month.

Most of the heat recorded in the report came from the southwestern U.S. There were record highs for Arizona, Nevada and Utah.

Here is the full report: www.crh.noaa.gov/eax/?n=season_spring09_sum

We are still way below the average for temps in June. This is great for the electric bill. Some are telling me the flowers have never looked better. Some others want to know if there will be a time when the kids will not be shivering at the swimming pools.

The week ahead is still looking cooler than the average...and there will be chances for showers and isolated thunderstorms just about every day.

The split jet stream is one of the reasons for the cooler and wet weather. The southern jet is keeping the warmer air far south of Iowa. The northern jet is sweeping in the cooler air just to the north of Iowa. We are caught in the pinch...and that means showers... and clouds. High temperatures have remained about 10 degrees cooler than normal.

The good news is we are not seeing the severe storms...most of that is over Missouri. In fact Missouri could be caught in the heavy rain pattern we had during June and July of 1993. The low that is set up off the Pacific Northwest has similar characteristics of the storm system that sent one shot of rain after another over Iowa in 1993.

There was frost last night in North Dakota. Sweater weather in summer?

Have a great one... see you on the air tonight.

Ed