While precipitation has been fickle, there's been no issue accumulating needed growing degree days so far. The featured chart presents the accumulated GDDs since 1 May for Ames with the blue area representing the envelope of period of record observations. This year is plotted along with last year and the drought year of 1988. This year's total is well above average and last year's total. Such is often the case with dry weather leading to warmer temperatures as the sun is able to more efficiently heat drier soil than wetter. The near term and longer term forecasts continue to advertise warmer than average temperatures, so it seems very likely that GDDs will not be of concern this growing season.

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Tags:   gdd