Wild Weather Swings, Boxelder Bugs and Sundogs

Talk about the Iowa adage: "If you want the weather to change, wait ten minutes..." High temperatures in the Cedar Rapids area on Monday, February 26 and Tuesday, February 27 reached official record highs of 75 degrees and 70 degrees F. That was not typical. What is typical at this time of year are dramatic temperature swings when cold fronts moves through--but even this one was eye opening. At my home location, temperatures climbed above 60 degrees just after 9:30 CST am on February 27. Temps continued to rise until they peaked at 70.3 degrees at 1:00 pm. The cold front made its impact around 3:00 pm when the temperature was 67.5 degrees. By 5:30 pm the reading had sunk below 40 degrees, and by 11:00 pm it was under 20 degrees. The low temperature bottomed out at 8.1 degrees F at 6:50 am the next day (February 28), a difference of 62.2 degrees! The image above shows the cold front moving over my home location at 4:11 pm on February 27. Nikon Z6ii camera.

Maybe even more remarkable than the 62 degree temperature difference was the presence of a sundog on the morning of February 28--less than 24 hours after a recorded temperature of 70 degrees in the same location! Steam rose from the Cedar River. This image looks east from 33rd Avenue & 12th Street SW in Cedar Rapids. The previous day's unseasonable warmth brought out a smattering of robins and legions of boxelder bugs, both of which probably wished they hadn't. iPhone 11 camera.

The clash of warm and cold air masses also created severe weather, with tornadic storms firing up late Tuesday afternoon just south and southeast of Davenport, Iowa and moving through the Chicago area later that evening. Above is a Radarscope capture of the Chicago suburbs at 7:07 pm on February 27, showing tornado-warned polygons.