Iowa tourism affected by winter storms
February 20th, 2008The north Iowa tourism has been greatly affected by the recent weather and it looks like it will be in for several more events of old man winter showing his stuff. The northern part of the state is well known for an effect called blizzard alley. Because the state is reasonably flat and mostly farm ground there is nothing to stop or slow the winds in that area. That allows for a relatively small amount of snow to cause white out conditions with just normal wind speeds. If they get a storm front moving through with a lot of moisture and that is followed by an Alberta clipper the resulting storm can block country roads for days or weeks at a time. An Alberta clipper is a strong blast of very cold wind from the northwest, in other words, it comes from Alberta, thus the name. Depending on the position of the jet stream these clippers can come almost weekly as has been shown this winter. In a good year (at least what we call good) the jet stream will stay north of the state and the clipper can’t cross it. That makes for much warmer winters with less snow.