Midwest Weekly Highlights - June 24-30, 2014

---

Heavy Precipitation in Saturated Areas

The last week of June featured heavy, recurring precipitation across most of Iowa, northern Illinois, and portions of Wisconsin with amounts upwards of 8" in parts of Iowa (Figure 1). Other parts of the region (northern Ohio, southeast Missouri, northwest Indiana, and southwest Michigan) saw above average rainfall as well with weekly totals ranging from 200% to 400% of normal for this time of year (Figure 2). A large part of northern Missouri and Minnesota received less than 75% of the average precipitation with rainfall totals less than 0.5" across these areas.
 

Temperatures Above Average for Much of Region

Daily average temperatures throughout the week ranged from near normal in the western part of the region to 1°F to 6°F above normal in the northern and eastern parts of the region (Figure 3). Central Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and portions of Kentucky experienced the greatest departures of at least 3°F above average for the week, with eastern Ohio and northern Michigan topping out at 5°F to 6°F above average. The daily maximum temperatures were near normal for most of the region to below normal across western and southern portions of the Midwest (Figure 4). Nighttime lows (minimum temperature) however, were well above normal for most of the region, bringing the daily average temperature to just above normal for most states (Figure 5). The last day of the month was the warmest, with 90°F to 95°F temperatures extending into Missouri, southern Illinois, western Kentucky, and southern Indiana (Figure 6).

Multiple Severe Weather Events

June 29th and 30th featured very active severe weather days across Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, southern Wisconsin, Indiana, and southern Michigan (Figure 7). This capped off a rather active severe weather week which saw a severe weather report each day (Figure 8). The only state that did not see any severe weather for the week was Kentucky. There were multiple reports of tornadoes across Iowa (Grundy, Hamilton, Hardin, Jones, Webster, Adair, and Tama counties), northern Missouri (Buchanan, Mercer, Gentry, Harrison, Clay and Nodaway counties), Wisconsin (Dane, Grant, and Iowa counties), Illinois (LaSalle, Kendall, and Will counties), and Indiana (Kosciusko and Lagrange counties) on June 29th and 30th. Multiple wind damage reports followed the derecho on June 30th that impacted Iowa, southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois, Indiana, and southern Michigan. Multiple homes were damaged and numerous trees were downed by the event. The June 30th storms also resulted in two fatalities (Iowa and Indiana), multiple homes were without power, and flooding occurred across Iowa and northern Illinois due to the heavy rain. On other days of the week, two EF-1 tornadoes that struck Indiana (Kosciusko and Lagrange counties) on June 24th caused damage to many homes with winds estimated at 100mph. EF-0 tornadoes were also reported in Wisconsin on June 25th (Green County) and 27th (Dunn County).

-ETS-