Weekly Weather and Crop Update

The Southern Research and Outreach Center at Waseca released the weekly weather and crop update for the week of May 11 through May 17. Warm and wet pretty well describes the weather last week. Temperatures averaged 66.4 degrees, 8.3 degrees above normal. Rainfall was 1.47 inches, .57 inches above normal. It was a very good week for Growing Degree Units as we accumulated 120.5, which was 70 percent above normal.

Last year this week was very cold as we accumulated only 32 Growing Degree Units. Plus last year it was May 15 that freezing temperatures burned the corn off to ground level. Before the rain, planting was in high gear. Fortunately the corn is pretty well all planted and a large percentage of the beans has been planted. The rain will activate the pre-emergence herbicides that have been applied. The corn that was planted April 11 before all the cold wet weather is in the V3 stage and survived the challenging weather just fine.