Welcome to Weathered Questions, where we answer the questions on your radar.
Well, welcome into Weathered Questions, the podcast where we answer the meteorology questions on your radar.
My name is Jan Ryher, joined by my co-host meteorologist Kai O'Mara.
And hey, we always love having your weather wonderings in the queue, so we have some things to talk about.
So please do let us know what your questions are by sending us an email.
weatheredquestionsatgmail.com to join in on the conversation.
If you want to ask a question, but you don't want your name mentioned, that's okay.
We can do that too.
But we would love to know, again, what is on your radar?
One of those questions coming in this week is kind of a follow up to a few
episodes past.
That question is, can you explain the importance of the LLJ in more detail?
And I think we maybe just briefly kind of a glimpse past this LLJ is that low level jet that we talked about.
So getting it a little bit into the weeds of meteorology here right off the bat on this weathered questions episode.
Kai, what do you got?
Yeah, well, and the low level jets very important, especially for Midwest weather, that's why we get so many storms at night.
actually the heating of the day sometimes generates storms but we get some of those large complexes to roll in at night and you might be wondering wait a second it can't be the heating of the day causing that something else must be going on it's the low-level jet that happens and it ranges anywhere from 2,500 feet off the ground to about a mile up so call it 2,500 to 5,000 feet
And shortly after sunset, there's a pressure difference that happens from the east coast over till about the Rockies.
And of course, we're not going to get west of the Rockies at that elevation.
Why?
Because we hit the mountains.
So there's a pressure difference in that area.
And these air parcels start flowing back towards the east, and the Coriolis force starts turning it to the north.
And as a result, you get this river of air coming up here.
Now that does happen.
Even in the absence of a huge
low pressure system.
We can still have that happening.
It just probably wouldn't be as strong as it normally would unless we had a low pressure system nearby.
But that is a huge, huge mechanism for summertime rain in Iowa, especially.
I've got a lot of that going on, but it's also a big driver, not necessarily at night so much here.
But if you get a large river of air going at 2,500 feet and storms are rapidly forming, depending on the direction of that wind, you can get some some
really viciously rotating storms, if it all lines up correctly, because that air goes from a rather calm ground up into that river of air and turns really quick, you know, 40, 50 miles an hour.
So the importance of that thing is not just for wind shear, but also for transporting moisture from the Gulf up into the Midwest.
This past summer, it transported moisture all the way to Southern Canada.
So it's a big mechanism in our atmosphere for sure.
And it's super important during the summertime for rainfall.
We talked so much about those ingredients that you need for storms.
And it's basically the train that brings those ingredients into the Midwest and trucks them right in and plops them right over the top of us and the storms just beat off of them then.
Yeah, it's really something.
It's really something to see.
And as a result, the storms can keep building.
They can just keep building over the same spots.
But sometimes what'll happen is we'll get a storm to come in in the morning, right?
And then all of a sudden it dies.
It's like
9,
10 in the morning, and it all dies.
Well, that's the exact reverse happening.
Now we're getting the pressures to even out between the east and west.
And as a result, there's not nearly the transport anymore.
And without the transport...
You don't have the gas to sustain anything.
Some mornings this goes a little bit longer, but most times it quits about 10 in the morning when you start to see a good pullback on some of the precip.
And let's just say, amongst other things in the country, what if you just hacked at the Rocky Mountains and they turn into a desert?
This entire mechanism wouldn't even be present.
So it's incredibly important.
The topography of the continent and the United States, it all comes together for this very important mechanism to come through.
the air.
We can't see it unless it's transporting moisture and then all of a sudden you get a big storm to form at 10 at night and now you can answer that for your next trivia night.
What
caused that
storm at 10 at night?
Exactly.
That's one of the things we're looking at, you know, sometimes if you're familiar with the Midwest and how maybe tornado watches happen and stuff, you might see those watches going until about 7 p.m.
or you might see them going until about 10 p.m.
or even 3 a.m., right?
Those are generally those kind of cutoff times.
Those 7 p.m.
ones, chances are low-level jet isn't playing a factor into those.
Those 10 p.m.
3 a.m.
ones, those are the ones where meteorologists are looking at modeling and there is indication that the low-level jet is going to play a role.
It's going to help sustain those storms into the overnight hours and help keep things going and tumultuous during the overnight timeframe.
Yep, there you go.
And then what will happen is when they quit in the morning, your neighbor will say, oh, it's going to get steamy now.
And they're going to be right because it does get warm.
And that leads us into our next question, which I'm going to guarantee you.
I've got emails about you've got emails about we might
get
another email about it today
for
probably the question is, why do meteorologists always talk about the heat index?
I just want to know the temperature.
Yeah,
I definitely don't have any pent-up anger over this one.
Yeah, so Jan, why do we always talk about the heat index?
Because it's important.
Yes, it is.
There.
Question answered.
Moving on.
No.
So heat index and similar with wind chill, right?
We get the same question in the winter.
I just want to know the temperature.
I just want to know the temperature.
Well, the temperature only does you so much good.
The heat index, the wind chill, those are temperatures that we come to through an equation based off of other things happening in the atmosphere that are truly impacting you.
So many people say, oh, well, heat doesn't bother me.
Yeah, sure.
Maybe maybe you think you are you have a better tolerance for it But when you have a high heat index that is not only the heat it is also a factor of humidity and That is where things can start to get dangerous essentially Heat index again.
It's that equation it factors in how hot is it and how much humidity is there?
That number comes together gives us that heat index that feels like temperature
And the reason that that is important is because the more humidity you have, the higher that heat index value will end up being.
Factor that in on top of an already hot temperature and you cannot cool down.
Well, basically the higher that number is so.
the more humidity that's in the atmosphere, the less able you are to sweat.
Sweat is what our body naturally does to cool itself down.
And if you are not able to cool yourself down, that's where you start to get into heat distress, heat stroke, things like that, that can very quickly be problematic.
So that's why we focus so much on it, because it is what is genuinely impacting people and animals that are outside.
in that environment, you know, it's not just a, an 88 degree temperature may not seem too bad, but when you factor in a 80 degree dew point on top of that, oof, that's, that's pretty disgusting, right?
It
is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what it is, I mean, it is just what you said.
It's, it's an application, it's a derived value for living creatures.
It's what it is.
Their outdoor thermometer doesn't care.
Your glass of water doesn't care.
In fact, the pavement temperature will be the same.
It's just how it feels to a human being.
And there are products out there, you know, the extreme heat warning and the heat advisory that not only address that, but also address ambient air temperatures.
And I'm telling you, if you've never been to Las Vegas when it's 97, a Las Vegas 97 is remarkably pleasant.
It is it's remarkably pleasant.
You can walk down the Vegas strip You don't need a shower at the end of it I've been there and I've done it Mm-hmm.
Try that here when it's 97 with a dew point is 77 won't work when the
dew point
is 20 in Vegas and the humidity is 6% Then what happens is your what you just explained The sweat forms on your skin.
It actually carries body heat away.
It's a cooling process
And it does so really effectively.
And so that's really why we talk about it.
Maybe is it talked about slightly too much?
Possibly.
But it's one of those deals where you can bring any doctor on.
We did earlier this year.
And
we may bring them on again for another set of questions later this year, especially with kids when you've got smaller bodies.
you know, extreme heat, extreme cold, they're a little more sensitive to that than adults are.
So they can get to play in, not drink correctly and get themselves dehydrated really quick if the body's trying really hard to cool down and it's not able to because the humidity is too high.
So that's why
we talked about it.
Little kids, but also the older you get, the harder it is for you to regulate body temperature as well, which I think may almost be harder, right?
mom says you got to go inside, you know, yeah, maybe you put up a fight, but you go inside, right?
Whereas if you've been been fine for so long, right, your entire adult life, and all of a sudden now it's getting harder to regulate your body temperature, you may not realize how quickly that heat is going to impact you.
So again, another important thing for audience members to keep in mind.
And if you don't want to know it, don't comment and move on.
It's
really quite simple.
It really is.
But that's why you'd be surprised to know that, you know, Iowa does not get in the hundreds hardly at all anymore.
We stop in the 90s because
our
humidity is so atrocious.
And it makes it feel that much worse.
Everybody's saying, you know, how much hotter the summers are.
Actually, from a daytime high perspective, they aren't.
It's the humidity that's just that much higher over the years.
Humidity definitely has been...
drives the bus, that's
for sure.
Oh yeah, drives the bus, that is for sure.
If you are curious and do want to know, how is that heat index actually calculated?
You can Google it, heat index equation.
It's nasty.
The T that you're going to see, that stands for temperature.
So whatever the actual air temperature is, that's used a couple times in it.
If you see an RH, that stands for relative humidity.
But there's a whole bunch of numbers and decimals and stuff that we're not going to bog you down with.
There is an actual equation for it.
It is an actual formula that has been used for a while.
It's not just a number that we're like, it feels like it might be 106 with stuff like that.
And like, no, there is an actual equation for it.
Yep, sure is.
And I think it assumes that you are 510 in a t-shirt and wearing light pants too, I think.
I don't think it's
I don't think it's t-shirt and shorts assuming.
I think it's a t-shirt, average height, and light pants.
Seriously.
That's true, because those things do impact it.
In fact, I had an event a couple weeks back where we took t-shirts, we just set them on the sidewalk, and we took the temperature of them every 10 minutes for an hour, and yeah, it's not just something we say that
Oh, black makes you hotter or white makes you cooler in terms of t-shirt colors.
The darker that shirt color is or pant color is, it's going to make you warmer.
So if you are wearing longer pants or if you're wearing darker colored clothing, those things are going to make you hotter as well.
And your personal heat index, I guess, may be a little bit elevated because of those things too.
So yeah, good point.
All right.
Let's move into... I did that experiment with some kiddos here in Central Iowa.
A very common question that the kiddos like to ask.
We're going to ask you.
We're going to turn this one around.
We're going to say for your trivia question today, why is the sky blue?
Is it because of reflecting oceans, reflecting ice sheets, chemicals, or the scattering of light?
Why is the sky blue again multiple choice?
Why is the sky blue reflecting oceans reflecting ice sheets chemicals or scattering of light?
We'll be back in just a few seconds with that answer All right, we're back
You probably got it narrowed down maybe to just a couple of them.
I think one of the common thoughts is that it's reflecting of oceans, but it's actually light scattering.
So D, scattering of light is going to be why the sky is blue.
And essentially, you have wavelengths of light.
A lot of us, maybe we don't think about it a lot, but the sunlight.
It has all of the colors of the visible light spectrum in it.
And what happens is it goes through our atmosphere.
It hits all of these different chemicals and not chemicals, but the molecules.
That's the word I want.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Oh, molecules.
And it hits those and they spread out and light gets scattered out.
And the blue light is the one that's most left behind for us.
and so that's why our sky is blue.
On other planets, depending on their makeup of their atmosphere, they actually have different colored sky, which is kind of cool to think about.
Yeah, well, it's different mechanisms in the atmosphere, different molecules sitting there.
Our atmosphere is made up of an extremely favorable amount of gas that keeps us alive.
Venus is not.
True.
So, you know, it gets pretty crazy when you think about that, but
Yeah, this this name Rayleigh scattering was named after Lord John Rayleigh and It was first kind of coined in 1870 somewhere close to there about how this all works and you know the big big thing about some of this stuff is When we start talking about scattering of light And we start getting into it and you'll notice the different types of colors that you see in the morning versus midday
Versus evening it all changes and
yet
there hasn't been a cloud in the sky and the Sun didn't change its color The Sun is white by the way.
It's not actually yellow.
It's white light Yep, and it goes through whole spectrum now go to Hobby Lobby go to Michaels go to your favorite craft store grab a prism and Go grab a flashlight and break it up into its spectrum and it's the same kind of stuff
The longer it shines through the atmosphere, the longer the wavelengths are going to be.
And so as a result, the reds and the oranges are dominant in the first and last parts of the day.
And then your blue and even different shades of blue, kind of common when you look up in the atmosphere too.
So, neat stuff.
Yeah.
Well, and sometimes you might observe that, like you said, Kai there.
Sometimes it's a darker blue.
Sometimes it's a lighter blue, a more milky blue.
And I actually just a couple weeks back did a weather camp with some kids, that same one that we were doing the t-shirt experiment.
And we looked up, and one of the questions that I was asked is one I brought to the podcast today from the kids.
Why does the horizon look whiter than when you're looking straight up?
Why does that happen?
Very inquisitive children.
And it was a great question.
And we had a fun time talking about why that happens.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, and you also have to think about some of these other biological things going on where you've got wildfires in the area, smoke particulates that enhances scattering.
You can have haze and ozone also.
Ozone is a protectant aloft, but it's a pollutant down near the ground.
And
so.
That's another reason why it might look whiter, looking out farther, as opposed to looking straight up.
You simply have more atmosphere to shine through.
So that's a good
question
from those kids.
It's the same concept that goes into why our sunsets are the color they are and stuff, basically.
Where you're looking closer to the horizon, you have more atmosphere to go through, more scattering, all of that that we've already kind
of... Yep.
Very true.
Very true.
So I wonder...
I wonder how many kids asked you those questions?
Was it just one or is it several?
I think it was just one.
I mean, one of them asked it and then they kind of, you know, they kind of feed off each other, right?
Of asking follow up questions
and
stuff.
That's good.
That's absolutely good.
Here's a good question because we're still in the wet season technically.
And then don't worry, we are going to get to some Iowa State Fair statistics.
We'll get there.
Here's what we call point rainfall totals.
And it's exactly as it sounds this rainfall was measured at a point Jan the question is where to find them how they're gathered and what do they mean?
Well, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna answer in reverse.
I'm gonna start with what do they mean?
All right
What do they mean point rainfall totals are exactly that they are rainfall for one spot so
Sometimes you might see an official rainfall total come in for an area and it says two inches of rain.
We got two inches of rain.
And you looked in your rain gauge this morning and you're like, I only got 1.5.
And maybe your neighbor across town is like, well, I got 2.5.
Who's right?
Who's wrong?
Chances are you're all right.
That's just how it works.
A storm is not going to rain the exact same amount
in the entire area that it's covering.
And even if it is in one spot, that storm is moving.
You are in different areas of the world.
Everybody's experiencing different things, different conditions at different times, different influences.
So all of that to say, probably all of those totals are correct.
And it's just kind of a gradient across the board.
That, you know, there's gonna be one spot that kind of
gets that higher concentration, that bullseye, and going out from there, it's going to be lesser and lesser and lesser.
So all of that to say, the point rainfall totals are for one specific spot, nobody's right, nobody's wrong, it just kind of is what it is.
How they're gathered, a couple different ways.
We do have automated rainfall.
stations or weather stations that have something called a tipping bucket a lot of times.
There are some other ways that rainfall measurements can be gathered, but that's one of the more common ones.
Essentially, there's a little mechanism that rain falls in, it fills up, it goes into the bucket, the other end, it fills up, goes into the bucket, and it just kind of teeter totters back and forth.
So that's the automated way.
The best way still, even
you know, in in 2026, it's going to be your standard classic rain gauge that has has the ruler on on it.
And it just falls in.
It's very manual, very, very basic.
But you have somebody checking that every day and making sure and putting in those readings.
And Kai, you can speak a lot to that, can't you?
Yeah.
Yes.
So I'm part of the Cocoa Ross network, which is community collaborative rain, hail and snow network.
And it originated in Colorado and it does exactly what you're talking about.
It provides point rainfall totals and snowfall totals, by the way, um, for any weather events that come through.
And when I first started in meteorology, Cocoa Ross wasn't even a thing.
So you'd get the, okay, the airport got a quarter of an inch and you'd put it on the TV broadcast.
And somebody would come in and they'd call you and say, hey, how much of the north side get?
Well, yeah, that's a great question.
We have no data up there.
Do you ever report for us?
And they'll usually say, you know, yeah, well, I got an inch up here, a whole lot more in the airport.
I said, yeah, thanks.
That's kind of what radar was showing us too.
We appreciate that.
Well, now people can actually put that into a network.
It goes online.
And for, I think for rainfall, it is infinitely more valuable than snowfall.
And here's why.
Rainfall, a lot of it generates from thunderstorms, which as we know, can be very spotty.
You can hit the north side of town hard and the south side gets nothing.
You can tell by just driving around.
You can actually see the rain coming down.
Snow doesn't tend to do that.
If we report that a town got three inches of snow, unless it's like a major metro like Minneapolis, the town probably got three inches of snow.
But rain is so much more variable.
So much more variable.
And so the more data you have, that actually goes into the water modeling that goes into some of the river stage models.
And it's just good stuff all around.
So that's what that it's really important.
In fact, we could use more spotters and more volunteers like that.
So, you know, if any kids are interested in being a Kokoras observer, you can do that.
I believe you have to be at least 12 or 13.
But if you've got a passion for weather and you can put the gauge up and you can read a number, it's all you need to do.
It's very simple.
Or parents, if you want to do it and have kids, you know, kids' help and stuff, right?
You can sign up for it.
Yeah, you can write comments in your reports and everything.
And it's really, really important.
And it's a network that I wish we could have had 20 years ago.
But we didn't.
And now we have it.
And that means now that we have it, we can leverage that good stuff.
OK, before we get to the end here, did you have more on rainfall?
The only other part of that question, I think, was where to find them.
And I don't know if I can cover that really, really fast, but there are lots of sources for it.
Obviously, National Weather Service, I would say, is our preferred one.
You can also go to that CocoaRoss website, and they will give you totals as well.
But if you go to a National Weather Service page, click on your local forecast office.
Generally, there's something under the current conditions tab for rainfall totals or snowfall totals.
And you can get
all of those totals from across an area versus just a single one that you might see on a TV weather report or something like that.
Again, really quick synopsis.
If somebody wants us to go into more detail, write us in, weatheredquestions at gmail.com, and we can give you better directions on that.
Iowa State Fair starts.
It's August 13th through 23rd this year.
And when you look at the climatological averages of the fair taken from the Des Moines Airport,
The average high is only about 83.
That might be surprising for a lot of folks.
That is surprising.
They think it's going to be a really hot situation.
Now there's normally two hot days per fair, 90 plus degrees, two days.
There's usually at least a cool day in there.
And they average at least one inch of rain in the 10 days of the fair.
They average actually 1.39.
The warmest Iowa State Fair occurred in 1983.
And that's when nearly every day was above 100.
August 16th of 1983 is the all-time record high temperature at 108 at the Iowa
State Fairgrounds.
That is just disgusting.
Yeah, and you know, we have to look at some of this differently because we have to throw the September dates out.
They used to hold the fair in September, if you didn't know that.
I do not.
The 1800s, early 1900s, they used to hold the fair in September.
And so typically you get two hot days, a lot of days in the 80s, and about an inch or two worth of rain.
So if you're planning to go the whole duration, let's see how close we are.
Let's see if those averages work out this year.
But it's nifty to watch those things.
And it matters because a hot year can take attendance down.
A wet year can take attendance down.
And so many years in a row now, Jan.
I don't know how many years it's been.
It's been a million in attendance.
And hopefully we can hit that and surpass that again this year.
But August 13th through 23.
Or even
getting that comfortable day, that cooler day as long as it's not rainy on the weekends, that can skyrocket attendance, right?
Because everyone's like, oh yeah, why not?
Let's go out.
If you can get four of those 10 weekend days as nice, that's the fairgoers and the fair organizers.
They have to love that.
So let's see how the averages work out here in 2026.
But again, it's August 13th through the 23rd at Des Moines.
So that brings us to another end of another great episode.
And of course, if this jogged your memory of maybe some old things that you've experienced in weather, maybe it's something you measured, maybe it's something you saw in the sky, maybe it's a weird cloud formation, or just learned something new you want to share with us.
You can always share it with us.
We want to hear from you.
You can email your questions to weatheredquestions.gmail.com.
Until next time, stay safe.