The last few weeks of April and first week or so of May are always tenuous for Iowa as newly planted crops and early developing plants can be susceptible to frost risks. This year the state has fared quite well over this period and the near term forecast looks to continue our recent trend. The featured map presents minimum low temperatures over the past two week based on long term climate sites tracked by the IEM. Sub freezing temperatures have been very isolated with most of the state substantially above freezing for this period. Of course, there are micro-climate scale areas of the state not well represented by these point observations, but those areas will see such frost risks each year and are locally well known. While not attempting to jinx the situation, the one to two week out forecast models continue to advertise a very warm middle of May.

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