The weekly USDA NASS update released every Monday includes an estimate of the number of statewide days over the past seven days that were suitable for field work. This value is provided at the statewide level and so there are plenty of caveats to consider. The value for 30 April was reported as 4.8 days for Iowa, which is a good number to make crop planting progress. The technicolor dream of a daily feature chart presents the accumulated suitable days for Iowa each year since 1995. The accumulated value for this year stands at 17 days, so the X denotes each previous year's date with a similar value. One can see that we are well ahead of the pace set in 2022, but in line with 2020 and 2021. A number of previous years readily stick out including the difficult spring seasons of 2013 and 2019. The drought year of 2012 is a significant outlier as warm temperatures and persistent drought allowed for rapid accumulation of suitable days.

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