This week is Severe Weather Awareness Week in Iowa and each day is dedicated to a weather-related topic.

Monday is all about thunderstorms and Adair and Guthrie County Emergency Management Coordinator Bob Kempf tells Raccoon Valley Radio what weather elements are needed to transition a regular thunderstorm to make it severe.

“Well severe thunderstorms are those that have the capability of producing hail of an inch or larger, or wind gusts that are at 58-miles-per-hour or more. A (regular) thunderstorm would be less than that, that would be if it’s over that criteria it would be a severe thunderstorm.”

Kempf notes that a severe thunderstorm watch is typically issued for several counties or a larger portion of the state and is done several hours in advance of a possible warning. He says a severe thunderstorm warning is issued when the criteria is reported by a storm spotter or radar indicated and it is only for portions of a county.

“They (the National Weather Service) don’t put the whole county in that (warning) because they try and predict the track of the storm and where those potential threats are actually going to happen at.”

To hear more from Kempf about thunderstorms and the other topics for Severe Weather Awareness Week, listen to tomorrow’s and Wednesday’s Let’s Talk Guthrie County program.