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I'VE SEEN SOME THINGS...
I've been doing weather professionally for nearly 50 years and I have to say, I've seen some of the craziest weather of my life the past 8 weeks, none more impressive than what's occurred the past 24-36 hours. We all witnessed exceptional events, not the least of which was the all-time warmest winter temperatures ever recorded. The 79 in Moline Tuesday flips me out. 16 hours later, the temperature stood at 14 degrees with a wind chill of 4 below. So while it was 65 degrees colder, it "felt" 83 degrees colder with a 50 mph wind. That literally blurs my vision.
The Iowa Mesonet put together a graphic that measures the top 10 (feels like) temperature drops. In Cedar Rapids over a 17-hour period, the feel like readings went from 71 to 17 below, a drop of 88 degrees. Shazam! That handily beat January 18, of 1996, previously number 1 which had a drop of 83 degrees.
If you consider single day temperature changes (just one calendar day), Tuesday's plunge of 53 degrees in Moline from 79 late afternoon to 26 at midnight, was the 5th greatest on record. Cedar Rapids, (also on the graphic below), went from 72 to 16. That 56 degree drop ranks as the 3rd largest single day temperature change.
By the way, Dubuque, with highs of 72 degrees Monday and Tuesday, broke the previous daily records of 62 established in 1896, by 10 degrees apiece! That's a thrashing that's flat out scary. I could go on and on.
That said, it does get even more impressive, especially around Annawan, Illinois, 35 miles ESE of the Quad Cities. Not only did they get the record warmth with highs in the upper 70s, they were placed under a tornado watch and grazed by an actual tornado Tuesday evening that passed just NW. That in itself is a remarkable February feat. But, it gets better. About 8 hours later, it's in the 20s and snowing, enough to cover the ground. On this hi-res satellite image, you can see the snow band on the ground in relation to Annawan and the tornado.
In this image taken Wednesday, (part of the Henry County NWS storm survey), you can still see some snow left on the ground at the bottom of the image.