For mid May, Tuesday was a bit chilly with high temperatures struggling to get out of the 50s. Such chilly temperatures imply a meager growing degree day accumulation, which is ever important this time of year to promote crop development. The featured chart presents daily growing degree days for Des Moines with the observed value on Tuesday plotted along with two model forecasts, a crude daily average accumulation (short daily lines) and the associated accumulated values. The NWS NDFD forecast does go out as far as the GFS deterministic model, so that is why the red bars stop on the 26th. The chart nicely shows that we'll have four more days to go with below average GDDs prior to about a week of warmer weather taking us into June.

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Tags:   gdd   forecast