Hello, CALS, and happy Monday,
We are now just a short five weeks out from the start of classes, and for some even more importantly, there are only three-and-a-half weeks until the start of the Iowa State Fair. It is deep summer now, with corn and beans rising up (and in most places, the corn too high to see over – always a sure sign of the summers’ progress), and lots of folks taking their summer vacations to explore new places and visit family and old friends. I hope you are each enjoying this time of year. I have some statewide travel coming up - to the Iowa Great Lakes, to our McNay Memorial Research and Demonstration Farm and Southeast Research and Demonstration Farm, and elsewhere across our beautiful state.
Always on our mind is the weather, and here are some interesting statewide average notes from the recent report from IDALS for the week ending July 10:
- Topsoil moisture condition rated 3% very short, 19% short, 72% adequate and 6% surplus. Subsoil moisture condition rated 7% very short, 22% short, 66% adequate and 5% surplus.
- Corn condition rated 81% good to excellent. Soybean condition rating was 79% good to excellent. Oat condition was 80% good to excellent.
- A shift in the weather pattern brought a more active storm track to the Midwest along with a derecho that blew through northern Iowa. The derecho propagated over 600 miles from northwest South Dakota through northern Iowa before dissipating in Illinois. Sustained wind speeds along the derecho’s path approached 40 mph with wind gusts over 60 mph. The squall line left behind pockets of damaged corn and soybeans along with heavy rainfall. Many of the state’s reporting stations observed above-average rainfall with positive departures of over four inches in northern and eastern Iowa. Conditions were also unseasonably warm with a statewide average temperature of 76.5 degrees, 2.1 degrees above normal.
Weekly precipitation totals ranged from 0.31 inch in Washington (Washington County) to 6.14 inches in Spirit Lake (Dickinson County). The statewide weekly average precipitation was 2.12 inches, while the normal is 1.11 inches. Lamoni (Decatur County) and Osceola (Clarke County) reported the week’s high temperature of 100 degrees on July 5, on average 14 degrees above normal. Emmetsburg (Palo Alto County) reported the week’s low temperature of 51 degrees on July 6, 12 degrees below normal.
I hope your summer is going great, and you’ll approach the fall return of our students with renewed energy! Very best - Dan
Nature in Focus
In last week's message, I mentioned the incredible moments from the strong storm that went through Iowa the first full week of this month. Below is an image of the line of storm clouds as they passed over central Iowa.
Joel Rybolt, systems analyst in animal science, submitted these two photos of insects he came across in his Ankeny yard. The first is a horned worm caterpillar with Braconid wasp eggs attached. The wasp lays the eggs on the caterpillar, then they develop and live off the caterpillar until they mature and the caterpillar dies. Most people don't want these caterpillars, so this is a good thing. Joel likes the moths these produce and often moves the caterpillars around his tomatoes, keeping them from eating too much of the plant. The second photo is a dogbane beetle on one of his dogbane plants. Unlike Japanese beetles, these beetles only eat dogbane and are not very destructive (many people don't like the dogbane plant and consider it a weed). The dogbane beetles have metallic colors with green, copper and blue.
