It seems like it has been a very long while since Iowans have experienced a full sun day with clear blue skies. While the sun did come out at times over this past weekend, it was mostly another couple of days with a gloomy mix of haze, clouds, and Canadian wildfire smoke. The featured chart looks into our recent stretch of gloomy weather by plotting daily solar radiation totals from the ISU Soil Moisture station just west of Ames. The black line represents an estimate of what a completely clear day would total for solar radiation. You can easily see the struggles of these past 2-3 weeks versus some of the nicer days in early May. The lack of solar radiation has been combined with seasonally cool temperatures and a bit below average precipitation, so the net effect of all this is likely a bit of stasis / limping along with development that could use warmer temperatures, more sunshine, and more precipitation! The forecast for this week has a bit of hope for all three after cool and party cloudy Monday.

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