Weather in Des Moines in March

A hard month. March is a hard month in Des Moines, and worth planning around. Highs sit at 9.7 °C and the day is short; this is an indoors-with-excursions month, not an outdoors-all-day one.

March ranks 8 of 12 in Des Moines: past the worst of the year but short of September, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain on 8 days, 1 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Layers, and a genuinely waterproof outer — at 9.7 °C the difference between a good day and a miserable one is entirely down to what you are wearing.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 22 nights drop below freezing, so anything left outside stays frozen. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest March day reached 26.5 °C and the coldest night fell to -23.9 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 28 mm — roughly 58% of the month's rain in one day.

March is moderately variable: 12 mm in the driest year against 104 mm in the wettest, around an average of 48 mm. Roughly two Marchs in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 13.9 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity runs at 76%, which at 9.7 °C means damp rather than muggy — the kind of cold that gets into a coat and stays there.

How March sits in the year

The month is on the way up: 8.1 °C warmer than February, and April adds another 7.4 °C. Late in the month feels noticeably different from the start of it, which is worth knowing if the trip is short.

Daylight in March

11.9 hours of daylight, gaining 1.4 hours across the month. That is between Des Moines's extremes of 15.2 and 9.2 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

An inland climate

Des Moines has no sea to moderate it, and it shows: 40.3 °C separates the hottest afternoon of the year from the coldest night. That is a genuinely continental range, and it means summer and winter here are barely the same place.

How busy it gets

Quiet. Few other visitors, cheaper rooms, and a real chance some seasonal operators are shut.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

March in Des Moines versus nearby

If Des Moines is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Omaha is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, 1 day less rain. Kansas City is a better bet in March — 3.3 °C warmer, the same number of rain days.

So: March is a compromise. September is 32 points better and is what Des Moines is actually like at its best — worth moving the trip for if that is possible, and worth adjusting expectations for if it is not.

Every month in Des Moines

See all twelve months in Des Moines, or where else to go in March.