The featured chart presents the time period by planting date to accumulate at least 120 growing degree days for Ames. The chart nicely illustrates the story of this early growing season. Outside of some warm weather during late April, temperatures have generally struggled. The bars are colored by the number of days it took to accumulate 120 GDDs. For corn planted after 3 May, the GDD total has yet to reach 120 units, so thus the gray coloring. So corn that got planted earlier in April got to benefit from that warmer weather, but it was also generally dry and we have seen a few frost events over the past week, so about everything is generally struggling at this point. We desperately need warmer weather and rainfall, which the forecast for this week has some improvements in both departments.

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