In general, the corn seed hybrids farmers pick to plant are based on what the local climate will support to grow and bring to maturity before the fall frost. Typically, longer maturities will potentially support higher yields, but farmers are also book-ended by the spring season as soils need to be warm enough to support germination without the risk of significant freezing cold. So the result is a game of playing the odds as to what the climate will support. The featured chart presents a visualization between the interplay of planting date and the frequency of a given season reaching 2300 growing degree days prior to the first fall sub-32 degree temperature. The chart clearly shows the advantages of earlier planting dates with most all years reaching 2300 by the second week of September. The chart really starts to steepen up by the second week of May with chances rapidly increasing of a failure to reach 2300 GDDs by first fall freeze. The left panel shows the overall climatology and the right panel uses this year's to-date data to drive scenarios going forward using past year's data.

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