After a summer season of June through August that averaged 1.3 degrees cooler than normal for Iowa, some periods of warmer-than-normal weather during September helped push summer crops toward maturity in Iowa.

Through about the first 3.5 weeks of September, temperatures in most of the state had averaged from 3 to 6 degrees above normal, which is warmer than I was expecting. It appears that September will be the first month since last April when statewide average temperatures in Iowa will average above normal.

This past summer season (June through August) ranked as the seventh wettest for Iowa in the past 143 years. A common trend was for amounts to vary widely across the state in each month, going all the way back to April.

Even...