On the afternoon of March 6, a single supercell thunderstorm formed in northern Indiana and tracked northeast into southern Lower Michigan. In just over an hour, the storm produced four tornadoes, including a powerful EF-3 in Union City, Michigan, with estimated winds near 160 mph.
Every February, the phrase “the day the music died” returns to the American consciousness. It’s a lyric, a memory, a moment frozen in time. But before it became poetry, it was a winter night—raw, dark, and unforgiving—under Midwestern skies that offered no mercy.
January is supposed to be predictable in Osage and across northern Iowa.
Cold mornings. Snow that squeaks under your boots. Rivers locked up. Ground frozen solid. It’s the quietest month of the year, weather-wise — or at least it’s supposed to be.
Last week reminded us that January doesn’t always follow tradition.
If Santa kept a list of favorite places to fly on Christmas Eve — and there’s a good chance he does — Osage would quietly rank near the top.
Not because it’s flashy. Not because it’s big. But because it’s easy, familiar and welcoming in the way only a small town can be when the lights are on, the streets are quiet and everyone knows Christmas is about to arrive.
December 15, 2021, will forever stand apart in Iowa’s weather history. What unfolded that evening was not just unusual — it was unprecedented. From record-shattering warmth to a historic tornado outbreak and the nation’s first December derecho, the atmosphere behaved in ways no Iowan had ever witnessed. Even now, four years later, it remains one of the most extraordinary weather events in the modern record.
North Iowa residents may want to keep their boots, shovels and windshield scrapers close at hand this winter. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center is calling for a season that leans colder and wetter than average as a weak La Niña continues to influence weather patterns across the Upper Mississippi River Valley.
Iowa weather has always carried a reputation for extremes, but the afternoon of Nov. 12, 2005, remains one of the most striking examples of how the atmosphere can deliver two very different seasons from one powerful storm system.
Forty years ago this week, Osage and much of North Iowa were buried under nearly a foot of heavy, early-season snow — a storm that still stands as one of the region’s most memorable November weather events. Between Nov. 8 and 9, 1985, a potent low-pressure system swept across the Upper Midwest, transforming a crisp autumn day into a full-blown winter landscape overnight. When the flakes
