IEM Daily Bulletin for Aug 8 2025
daryl herzmann
Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 08 August 2025
News
No news is good newsIEM Code Pushes <repo,branch> on Github
| Timestamp | Repository | Message | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 7 10:24 AM | iem,main | 📝 Sundry updates per review | Link |
| Aug 7 12:58 PM | iem,main | 🐛 Correct threshold logic | Link |
| Aug 7 1:55 PM | iem,main | ♿️ Address TomSelect nagging issues | Link |
| Aug 7 9:30 PM | iem,main | ✨ Add LSR analysis autoplot option for rainfall https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/plotting/auto/?q=207 |
Link |
| Aug 7 9:59 AM | pyiem,main | 🎨 Use default value for empty vtecps string | Link |
Daily Feature
Solar Radiation Departures
Date: 07 Aug 05:30 AM
Votes: Good: 8
Bad: 0 Abstain: 0
A few recent requests to the IEM have wondered about solar radiation departures. These values are difficult to come by due to lack of observations, lack of robust climatologies, and general familiarity / applicability with what the values even mean. One approach is to use a model with near real-time estimates and a long term archive to attempt such a departure calculation. The IEM merges a couple of model estimates of solar radiation with the standard COOP daily observations to provide a downloadable dataset. The featured image looks into the NASA POWER estimates for Ames with 2025 daily values compared with period of record estimates back to 1984. A daily departure is plotted on the top panel and an accumulated departure is plotted within the bottom panel. This estimates a net positive ~50 Megajoules (MJ) departure since 1 May. One way to contextualize that value is that a sunny day this time of year should yield at least 25 MJ, so that departure would indicate a bonus of two extra sunny days vs an average accumulation. One item to note is that there are data availability lags with datasets like NASA POWER, so the plot indicates data only available up till 2 August.
The featured media can be generated on-demand here
.NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 12 AM 7 Aug 2025 - 12 AM 8 Aug 2025 CDT
| Summary | By WFO | Watches | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | US | IA | ARX | DVN | DMX | OAX | FSD | US |
| Tornado | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Svr Tstorm | 66 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Flash Flood | 8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | --- |
ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD
IEM Cow Report
SVR+TOR Warnings Issued: 63 Verified: 37 [58.7%] Polygon Size Versus County Size [29.5%] Average Perimeter Ratio [29.0%] Percentage of Warned Area Verified (15km) [16.6%] Average Storm Based Warning Size [3410 sq km] Probability of Detection(higher is better) [0.87] False Alarm Ratio (lower is better) [0.41] Critical Success Index (higher is better) [0.54]