Iowa
The end of El Niño could ramp up tornadoes in Iowa. What to expect this year.
Tornado forecast for Spring 2024
A meteorologist gives predictions for Spring’s severe weather season, specifically on the impact of tornadoes.
Spring started with a vengeance in Iowa in 2023. March had more tornadoes than any other month in Iowa during 2023. This spring season may be the opposite. Long-range forecasters warn of a slow start to severe weather season that will escalate as the year progresses.
Springtime weather patterns will contribute to severe weather throughout Tornado Alley, covering states from Texas through Nebraska, according to AccuWeather.
“The second half of spring is jumping out to us,” said Senior Meteorologist Paul Pastelok about the upcoming tornado activity.
More: A 2023 Iowa weather recap: Drought, tornado outbreaks and massive hail
What will this tornado season look like?
Last year’s weather season broke norms for severe weather season. In March, 206 tornadoes swept through the country. This is more than double the monthly historical average of 80, according to AccuWeather.
“The severe weather threat can be more frequent in the Midwest, Tennessee and Ohio valleys later March into May, while the northern Plains and Northeast can have an increase in May,” Pastelok said.
Tornadoes this year are also expected to near historic average of 1,225. AccuWeather predicts anywhere from 1,250 to 1,375 tornadoes across the country in 2024. That’s a downturn from the 1,423 reported in 2023.
More: Farm insurer joins others in pulling back from Iowa after increased storms
When is the highest risk for tornadoes in Iowa?
The month of May will have the highest risk for tornadoes in Iowa due to a change in weather patterns from the western and central Gulf of Mexico causing higher dewpoints and humidity.
“In addition, the southern storm track, impacting the Gulf Coast which lift north and meeting up with the northern storm track putting the central Plains and Midwest in a good path for strong severe weather events,” Pastelok said in an email to the Register.
Severe weather can still occur throughout March and April. From March 24 to March 29, Pastelok predicted potential severe weather including damaging wind gust, hail and some tornadoes. While April could have a high frequency of storms or cold fronts.
How many tornadoes were there in Iowa during 2023?
In 2023, 72 tornadoes touched down in Iowa, according to the National Weather Service. Last year had a little more than 20 tornadoes above normal.
2023 was also the earliest start to tornado season since the start of tornado recording in 1950, with two touching down on Jan. 16, 2023 in eastern Iowa, according to the NWS Iowa Tornado summary. March was the peak month for tornadoes in Iowa 2023. There were 25 tornadoes that swept different areas of the state that month.
Database: Track all of the tornaodes in Iowa since 1950
How many injuries were there in Iowa due to tornadoes in 2023?
In Iowa, there were 11 injuries due to tornadoes in 2023. Zero casualties occurred last year because of tornadoes, according to the NWS.
May could be ‘critical month’ for tornadoes: Why severe weather could increase as the year progresses?
El Niño predicted to conclude in the next few months. The El Niño season caused below average tornadoes and hail. There could be more activity in Tornado Alley during April and into May, according to AccuWeather. The temperatures of the Gulf of Mexico are near to slightly above historical averages, which can dictate severe weather season.
“If the water is slower to warm in March, this could hold back the number of severe weather reports in March, especially compared to March 2023,” Pastelok said.
As the Gulf of Mexico temperature increases later into spring, May could be a “critical month for tornadoes.”
“The season overall for the spring, for the entire nation will average near normal on severe weather reports but slightly below average on tornadoes (mainly due to the later start of high frequency tornado events),” Pastelok told the Register in an email Friday. “The number of tornadoes can pick up during the summer and the late season severe weather period in the fall.”
More: It’s official: February 2024 was the warmest-ever in Des Moines weather history
Kate Kealey is a general assignment reporter for the Register. Reach her at kkealey@registermedia.com or follow her on Twitter at @Kkealey17.
Iowa
New Iowa law flouts U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause
Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.
Where does your primary loyalty lie: as a citizen of America, or as a citizen of Iowa?
Probably seems like a meaningless question. But around the nation, more and more states these days are enacting laws in opposition to those of the federal government, placing the loyalty question front and center. And a growing number of U.S. residents are declaring a preference to honor their state laws above those of the United States.
ORIGINS OF THE SUPREMACY CLAUSE
In terms of settled law, there’s no real dispute: federal law outranks state law. The U.S. Constitution leaves no doubt. Article VI, Clause 2 (the “Supremacy Clause”), reads as follows:
Iowa
Even conferring diplomas, I see how Iowa has shut the door on public education
My passion for public education has been, let’s say, exacerbated by the actions of our state legislators.
Recently I had the pleasure of handing diplomas to graduates. I did nothing to help these individuals reach this milestone. I was standing on a stage facing the students, who had surmounted myriad odds to achieve their place on the steps to the stage.
I was facing all the people to the left and right, sitting on bleachers, who had had to beg them to get out of bed to go to school. I was facing all the faculty, who screamed alternately with joy and frustration during the years that culminated in this one hour celebration. All the people in that gymnasium were living witnesses to determination and hope and expectations and sacrifice and silliness and confidence and doubt and, most importantly, to the existence of, the efficacy of, the accessibility of public education.
Fittingly, the faculty was sitting behind the students. Behind is fitting, because they have been behind these students, lifting them up, reigning them in, pushing them forward, through this challenging journey.
A few of us are born to thrive in academia; the rest of us wrestle our way through the accouterments of education: requirements, curriculum, technology, tuition, new personalities, old habits, textbooks, lectures, traditions and innovations.
This diploma represents the equivalent of Indiana Jones stepping into space in his quest for the holy grail.
This diploma has prepared our students for “what if?” What if I take a step and find solid footing? What if I take a step and fall into space? We know that the faculty has prepared them for welding, nursing, growing, teaching, cooking, and dozens of other careers, but our students are stepping out into the space of the real world, a world that is not even close to the predictable environment of public education.
This diploma is part of hundreds of individuals stories, as varied as the shoes they are wearing, as varied as their DNA.
This is the only time they’ll all look alike, in caps and gowns, not sure if that cap is going to stay on, sweating under the robe. They are sitting closer together than they ever have in this journey through libraries and classrooms and internships and coffeeshops.
They line up to climb the steps, hand their name card to the dean, who double-checks to make sure she pronounces their name correctly, and they walk a few feet to a person they don’t know who hands them this precious folder.
I am the person they don’t know. I have not shared a cup of coffee or a beer with any of them. I have never read a single word they have written. I did not help them choose a major, I did not help them find a book, I did not suggest they redo an assignment. I did not hand them tissues as they cried in my office. I did not celebrate with them when they outdid themselves. I did nothing to get them up on that stage.
But I represent everything that is amazing and noble about a folder from Eastern Iowa Community College, from any institution of public education. I serve on the Board of Trustees. How I got on this stage with the “dignitaries” is another journey, that started somewhere. Maybe it started in a one-room country school, one room, two paths, a big bell in the belfry and assorted students, K-8, sitting in that one room with one teacher. I had an eighth-grade education by the time I finished kindergarten.
Maybe it started in a Works Progress Administration-built high school whose architectural style required 40 granite steps between creaky wooden floors.
Maybe it started when I sampled and rejected and finally accepted a career in public education.
Regardless, my passion for public education has been, let’s say, exacerbated by the actions of our state legislators as they have stripped away not only the pillars, but the foundations of public education. They have turned public education, even in the public schools, into a cut-throat competition for — money. Not for students. Not for staff. Not for communities. For profit. We used to confine competition to the playing field, the gym, the court. Now public schools are being forced to compete for services — the services of book sellers, the services of social workers and counselors. Our elected officials have stripped away the kind of funding that probably supported their own educations.
So, I shook hands with public education. Four Madisons, three Rileys, six Michaels, one Brecken, a couple Brandons and dozens more hands of real people with real names with a real education. I shook hands with the future. I shook hands that will build, guide, give, teach, save, protect. I shook hands with what has been the pride of Iowa: public education.
Interestingly, there were no legislators on that stage. That is unusual and significant. You tell me why.
Dianne Prichard is on the Board of Trustees of Davenport-based Eastern Iowa Community College.
Iowa
Iowa’s white oaks are dying. New test kits could show why.
COLO — More than a decade into a mysterious epidemic killing off white oak trees, Iowa foresters hope a new test kit will help them quickly screen trees in the field for half the cost of laboratory tests.
Inspired by COVID-19 rapid tests, a Minnesota startup developed a kit that amplifies the DNA of a fungus spreading among oaks weakened by drought. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources hopes to use information gathered from these kits to isolate infected trees and protect others.
“A lot of people are concerned about this white oak decline,” said Tivon Feeley, Forest Health Program leader for the Iowa DNR. Foresters want to know whether they should replant white oaks or choose other species. “Right now, I can’t tell them. (But) this test gives us a lot of tools we can start using.”
Background
Around 2010, foresters across the Midwest started noticing centuries-old white oak trees dying off in just one season and didn’t know why. Oak wilt, a fungal disease spread by insects or through the root systems of infected trees, was a possible culprit, but most foresters hadn’t seen it be so fast or so deadly.
“With this oak decline, we have two to three dead trees almost every other acre,” Amana Society Forester Tim Krauss said in October 2022. “We have to harvest the dead trees because we only have a year until they are no good. We can make our budget by just cutting dead trees. The downside is, they are not coming back.”
When 200-year-old and 300-year-old giants are felled, increased sunlight on the forest floor causes an explosion of invasive species and less-desirable trees, including hackberry and elm, Krauss said.
Climate change has played a role in the rapid decline of white oaks, with drought making the trees more vulnerable to disease or pests.
The U.S. Forest Service and the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers planned a pilot project with a new test kit to quickly determine if a tree has oak wilt, but efforts to develop the kits at the University of Toronto fell through in 2023.
What’s happened since
Abdennour Abbas, a professor of nanotechnology at the University of Minnesota, stepped up in 2023 with PureBioX, a St. Paul, Minn., startup that develops rapid tests for use in health care, pharmaceutical, food and agricultural industries.
“The regular test is a cell culture and it takes a very long time,” said Anil Meher, a PureBioX analytical chemist who last week visited Iowa for a trial of the oak wilt test kits at Hickory Grove Park near Colo, in Story County.
When plant diagnostic laboratories test trees for oak wilt, the results can take two weeks to two months and cost $70 to $300, the Iowa DNR’s Feeley said. PureBioX’s test kits take one hour and cost about $30 each.
“It’s quite simple so you can do it in the field setting,” Meher said.
Mark Runkel, an Iowa DNR forest health technician, and John Mullen, a GIS analyst for the department, walked out into a stand of trees at Hickory Grove to look for white oaks with signs of oak wilt. The outer leaves may turn brown, while the veins stay green. And when a branch of an infected tree is removed, the cut ends smell like fermented fruit.
From each tree, they gathered a cluster of leaves, a branch and a 3-inch trunk core. If the tests of leaves are effective in determining infection, future tests won’t require branches or trunk cores.
Mullen marked the locations of the trees in a tablet and gave each a unique ID. Mapping the infected trees is an early step to determine how oak wilt might be spreading.
Meher and Feeley put each sample into a tube with chemicals that break down the tree matter. Meher extracted the DNA and put it into a tiny vial, which is heated on a portable pad to amplify the DNA. If the Bretiella fagacearum fungus, which causes oak wilt, is present, the liquid will turn yellow. If the fungus is not present, the liquid turns pink.
If foresters find isolated trees with oak wilt, they could spray herbicide on those trees in hopes of halting the transmission through underground root systems, Feeley said.
The team plans to test trees in the Amana Society’s 7,000-acre timber, in Marshall County, in the Loess Hills in Western Iowa and in the Des Moines area. They also are putting out insect traps in forests with oak wilt to see what kinds of bugs might be carrying the fungus. Results of these studies will go into the 2024 Forest Health report.
Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com
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