Des Moines, IA weather
Right now 70°, clear · today 74° / 53°, fog · seven days from the National Weather Service
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Right now · 70° · clear · wind SSE 6 mph · 2° warmer than this time yesterday · at Des Moines, 12:00 PM
Today, in the Weather Service’s words
Patchy fog before 10am. Sunny, with a high near 74. South southeast wind 0 to 8 mph.
Seven days
Winter in Des Moines
Des Moines averages 37 inches of snow a year, according to NOAA’s 1991-2020 climate normals - a regular snow place. Snow several times a winter, well-practised response. Closures happen but need a real storm.
That is why local snowfall thresholds differ so much from one town to the next: a district that plans for 37 inches a year is equipped differently from one that never sees any. Here, roughly 6 inches in a single storm is where a normal school day comes under threat.
Upper air over Des Moines
The nearest radiosonde launch is Omaha, about 143 miles away. A weather balloon goes up twice a day and measures temperature, humidity and wind all the way through the atmosphere - which is what forecasters actually read to judge whether storms will fire, and how a surface forecast was arrived at.
Sources: National Weather Service forecast and hourly grid for Des Moines (api.weather.gov), updated Mon, 2:02 PM UTC. Sunrise and sunset from NOAA’s solar position calculations. Snowfall normals from NOAA’s 1991-2020 US Climate Normals. County lines from the US Census Bureau.