Weekly Weather and Crop Update

During the growing season I always read the weekly weather and crop update from the Southern Research and Outreach Center at Waseca. Saying the weather last week was miserable would be an understatement! Temperatures averaged just 41.4 degrees, 11.8 degrees below normal. Maybe this was Mother Nature paying us back for some of the nice warm weather we saw last winter? Rainfall came to 1.04 inches, which was only .18 inches above normal. Soil temperatures at the 2-inch depth were only 44 degrees, which was 10 degrees below normal.

Growing Degree Units (GDU) since May 1 totaled only 5.5. That is 30 percent below normal. Even though the end of April was very cold, the average for the month was still 3 degrees warmer than normal. April was the 20th month in a row that was warmer than normal. Rainfall for the month totaled 2.84 inches, and that was actually .37 inches below normal. We were fortunate that the weather system that dumped snow and multiple inches of rain tracked farther south and missed Minnesota. We only received about an inch, and now with the warm sunshine, farmers are getting back in the fields to plant corn.