Month: March 2015

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Spring Flood Risk – Minor For Most of Illinois

NOAA released their Spring Flood Risk today. According to their map, most of Illinois has a minor risk of flooding this spring. An area at risk of moderate flooding is seen in southern Illinois. Sorry for the non-transparent overlay on the map – their map, not mine.

sfoThe good news of sorts is that much of the upper Midwest, including northern Illinois has been dry for the last 3-4 months. In the last few weeks, what snow cover we had in the central US is gone, as this map shows.
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New NWS Outlooks for April and Beyond

The NOAA Climate Prediction Center released their latest outlooks for April and beyond today. Areas without shading are labeled EC for equal chances of above, below, and near-average conditions.

April

Here are the outlooks for April for temperature (left) and precipitation (right). Nothing much to report temperatures but the northern third of Illinois has an increased chance of below-average precipitation. This area has been dry all winter. Click to enlarge.

off14_tempoff14_prcp Continue reading “New NWS Outlooks for April and Beyond”

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Tracking Illinois Soil Temperatures

As the snow turns to mud this week, this is a good time to advertise links for the soil temperatures in Illinois. The Water Survey operates a 19-station network of sites around the state collecting hourly soil temperatures at 4 and 8 inches under grass as well as an estimate under bare ground.

All this information can be found at the Illinois Climate Network Soil Data site. Below is just a screenshot of that page to show where you would find that information on the real web page.

map2

Here is a snapshot of 4-inch soil temperatures as of 10 am, March 13, 2015. Soil temperatures are still near the freezing mark in the northern half of the state, but warm into the 40s and low 50s in the southern half of the state.

map1

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Historical Tornadoes in Illinois and the US

While tornadoes can happen any time of the year, the tornado season really starts to ramp up in March in Illinois (see plot below) and remains active through the spring and on into summer. April, May, and June are the three standout months historically. So far 2015 has been very quiet with no severe weather reported in Illinois so far, according to NOAA.

tornado-month

You can see more plots like this on our tornado plots page.

Historical Tornado Tracks

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