Iowa Environmental Mesonet

Iowa State University Department of Agronomy

Climodat reports are a great source of Iowa climate data

Growing Season Charts

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, but it is not near realtime.
Plot Parameter Year Month Day

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

# 2009 Growing Degree Days (base=50) (Mar 01 - Jul 04)
#-----------------------snip------------------
         StationName,  Latitude, Longitude,     gdd50
              NASHUA,     42.75,    -92.50,      1079
               LEWIS,     41.40,    -95.00,      1291
        CEDAR RAPIDS,     41.90,    -91.50,      1228
              CALMAR,     43.16,    -91.87,      1123
                AMES,     42.03,    -93.80,      1202
             Gilbert,  42.11109, -93.58334,      1160
           MUSCATINE,     41.22,    -91.06,      1288
          SUTHERLAND,     42.96,    -95.50,      1054
      CRAWFORDSVILLE,      41.2,    -91.50,      1269
            CHARITON,     41.00,    -93.32,      1270
             KANAWHA,     42.94,    -93.90,      1098
             CASTANA,     42.06,    -95.82,      1219

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.