Iowa Environmental Mesonet

Iowa State University Department of Agronomy

Growing Season Maps

This application will plot an accumulated variable for a time period of your selection. Data is based on the automated sensors from the ISU AG Climate network. A similiar application exists based on the COOP network data, which is of higher quality for temperature and precipitation.
Plot Parameter Year Month Day Image Size

Dynamic Historical Data:

Daily Data Plots
Growing Season Plots

Open this plot in a new window for comparison with other plots. Once the image is loaded up in another window, you can modify this plots parameters.

*Note: Precipitation recorded from this network is not reliable. You should use precipitation obs from the COOP network.

Departure from climatology is shown below the accumulated value.

Data Listing

# 2012 Growing Degree Days (base=50) (May 01 - May 16)
#-----------------------snip------------------
         StationName,  Latitude, Longitude,     gdd50
              Nashua,42.9369,-92.5702,       210
               Lewis,41.3112,-95.1725,       261
           Muscatine,41.3703,-91.1182,       246
             Kanawha,42.9170,-93.7841,       211
              Calmar,43.1632,-91.8662,       215
             Gilbert,42.1073,-93.3812,       209
        Cedar Rapids,41.9119,-91.6182,       229
                Ames,42.0212,-93.7745,       234
          Sutherland,42.9257,-95.5392,       199
       Crawforsville,41.2039,-91.4868,       236
            Chariton,41.0997,-93.4225,       225
             Castana,42.0670,-95.8814,       228

You should be able to 'copy & paste' this raw data listing into a simple text editor and save the data file on your machine. Most GIS systems can then import this dataset as a layer. You may have to omit the commented lines (#) if your GIS has trouble importing the data.