Iowa spring weather recap: It started cool and stormy but finished warmer and drier than average

Meteorological summer is here, and with that, it’s time to look back at how spring 2023 performed in central Iowa.For temperature ranking, spring 2023 was the 30th warmest on record in Des Moines. A large portion of warmth was attributed to an exceptionally warm May and above-average April.May 2023 was the 20th warmest May since records began in 1878. This May featured 15 days where the daily high temperature in Des Moines was greater than or equal to 80 degrees. While April and May were above average, spring 2023 did not start out that way — the average temperature for the month of March was nearly two degrees cooler than average.Our snowiest day of the season came on Saturday, March 11, when a narrow band of heavy snowfall dropped over 6 inches of snow in the Des Moines metro area.Drought has been affecting at least some parts of Iowa since the middle of 2020, and spring 2023 sought to keep drought conditions persisting across our area.Only 7.23 inches of rain was recorded in Des Moines, making this spring the 38th driest on record. This allowed for abnormally dry to moderate drought conditions to persist across the state. A dry spell toward the final two weeks of May allowed for a resurgence in short-term drought conditions. Spring 2023 also came on hard and fast with severe weather in Iowa. Our first major event of the season occurred on March 31 with a tornado outbreak that impacted Central and Eastern Iowa. There were several other severe storm events as well through April into early May that produced weak tornadoes and lots of hail. There were a total of 172 severe hail reports, meaning greater than 1 inch in diameter, in the central Iowa region, which outpaces the last five years. The middle to end of May saw a large reduction in severe weather as a blocking weather pattern settled into the Upper Midwest, forcing storm systems to go around our region and weaken before arriving.