“Where is Winter in Minnesota?” with Dennis Todey, Director of the UDSA Midwest Climate Hub
Good day and welcome to the University of Minnesota podcast Minnesota CropCast. I'm your host Dave Nicolai. I'm a University of Minnesota Extension educator in field crops along with my cohost doctor Seth Nave, University of Minnesota soybean extension specialist. We have a special guest today Seth, coming in all the way from the great state of Iowa and that would be doctor Dennis Toddy. Dennis is director of the Midwest Climate Hub and Dennis, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself before we diagnose all this wonderful weather that we're having right now?
Speaker 1:So a little bit of background. Sure.
Speaker 2:I'm originally an Iowan. So coming back to Ames was a real plus that I grew up in Southern Iowa. I I can can say I was the son of a coal miner. My dad did work in coal mines down there for for a couple of years before they closed down. Grew up in a small town called Rathbone down there.
Speaker 2:It's near a big lake. Lots of family in the area. So you said you're no one gonna ask about my second cousin. I got second cousins I don't know, so we can't even go that route. You know, grew up there, one of eight kids.
Speaker 2:Went to Iowa State and decided I wanna be a meteorologist and did get through on meteorology and then went to South Dakota School of Mines also in meteorology. Along the way, realized I wasn't gonna get where I thought I wanted to be and was gonna end up on a coast somewhere that I wanna stay in the Midwest. So I went back and got my PhD in ag meteorology and, got my PhD there and then have been working in developing information, educating, talking about weather, climate, and agriculture for several decades now. I'd had to stop and think about the numbers, but really enjoyed my opportunity to to get to do that.
Speaker 1:Well, before you came to Iowa, I do believe you were in a neighboring state in South Dakota for a while. Is that true?
Speaker 2:That is true. I I got I mentioned I got my master's in Rapid City at South Dakota School of Mines, and then I spent thirteen years at South Dakota State on the faculty there and was the state climatologist and spent quite a bit of time in your great state because, you know, compared to the Twin Cities, lots of Minnesota was a lot closer to us. And so they had have me come over and do talks there. So I enjoyed always getting to interact and engage with folks over there.
Speaker 1:How long have you been the director then in Iowa?
Speaker 2:Seven and a half years now. I came back in 2016. The hubs themselves have been around ten years, so I've I've actually been part of the director of this for for three quarters of its lifetime, which is is really kinda cool. So, yes, been back in AIMS seven and a half years and love the chance to to get back to the AIMS area. We my wife and I really, really enjoy it here.
Speaker 3:Tell us a little bit more about the Climate Hubs, and tell us I I was kinda surprised that they've only been around ten years. It's one of those things that I've tripped across, and I end up using, especially the Midwest Climate Hub information online quite lot. But then I look at the others as well. So give us and I so I just assume they've been around forever. So tell us a little bit about the history and what happened before you joined, and what their you know, what your charge is with the, Climate Hub.
Speaker 2:Sure. I mentioned this is the ten year anniversary, just like within a week of the ten year anniversary of them being rolled out. They were started under the Obama administration and previous secretary Vilsack, his first time around. And this was when, different agencies and government were being charged to what are you gonna do related to climate? How are you going to program?
Speaker 2:What are you gonna do structurally related to climate in your area? And USDA, oddly, didn't have a lot of weather climate. You mentioned Brad Rippey, whom we were discussing earlier, and the office of the chief economist, part of USDA. They had some weather climate presence there. So this is what was decided, what secretary Vilsack decided.
Speaker 2:They rolled out. There are a couple different iterations of this, but ends up there are 10 national climate hubs that were created, and they all have a regional emphasis to them. We sit in the agricultural research service, another set of five of us sit in the ARS, five sit in the forest service, and then try to deal with the wide range of issues related to climate and agriculture and forestry and all those kinds of issues. So, officially, our eight state area is Minnesota down to Missouri over to Michigan and Ohio, but we do work across with our partners. And sometimes, you know, like, we're we have the most row crop experience of all the hubs, so we expand outside that area to hit the row crop areas.
Speaker 2:And and the short version of what we do is to help agriculture deal with and may maintain resilience through a changing climate. That's the short version of it. So that gives us range of doing things near term, which are near outlooks, what's going on right now and sharing that with agriculture, to helping educate about how agriculture is being changed by climate and how climate is changing agriculture, working both ways there. But then also looking longer term about where are we going with what's happening in climate, how is that going to impact agriculture, what do we need to be doing for agriculture to to deal with these changing issues. So it's a nice broad area.
Speaker 2:There's there's plenty to be worked with. We get to work with a ton of great partners inside USDA, outside USDA. That's a a great amount of fun.
Speaker 3:So I really wanna suggest that folks visit your site. I think it's a little bit of an untapped resource for folks. I use it in an academic sense because I write an annual kind of update on The U. S. Soybean crop, and I have a weather section.
Speaker 3:And I really draw heavily on your weekly and monthly commentaries that you publish out of the hub. That's been really, really helpful for us. But then now, increasingly over the years, I've seen that there's more and more really nice maps down to county based or kind of creed maps that show weather events and weather trends and rainfall temperature patterns and anomalies, you know, all relative to the one hundred and twenty two or twenty three years of history that you've got. And really detailed summaries. So this is even really nice for traders or other people in agriculture, I think, to utilize in terms of resources for communicating about, you know, even even recent weather events and and and in season climate.
Speaker 2:That's that's kind of you to say, and we appreciate that. We we do do some near term things trying to help connect longer range outlooks, which Noah puts together with what does it mean for agriculture. So we we that's a product called our AgFocus Outlook. We also have a series of of climate assessments that we are doing relay on state by state assessments of what is happening in that state in the way of agriculture, how is climate impacting that, what are the what does the future look like. And for your Minnesota folks, we just rolled out the Minnesota version of that, just a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 2:So that was just added. We're gradually working state by state around the region to to develop these. And then they were also putting together a some more or in the early stages of these individual crops. So we have one on Christmas trees that is almost wrapped up. We're doing something on tree fruits, and then we're figure plotting our our our next moves on on which of those related so that, you know, what does climate change mean for this crop or this, you know, this soils or things like that.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:So a lot of what you're doing is interpreting some of these weather maps and instruments. But unlike, you know, I perhaps say state weather station, you're not pouring over in creating the forecast or the seven day or the ten day or some of these other maps and instruments. You're pulling those in from various sources that are as appropriate and then providing a dialogue or interpretation? Would that be more correct?
Speaker 2:Correct. Yes. We we don't you know, we're there's a lot of weather and climate data that's collected by a lot of other entities, NOAA, individual states. So we don't necessarily need to do that. We do try to help them sometimes collect more information like soil temperatures or soil moisture that is really important for agriculture, try to encourage those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:But then, yeah, what does that mean? What do these outlooks mean? What does this data mean for agriculture? Because there is a lot of data. There are a lot of outlooks.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of forecasts. Sometimes you did need somebody to help, you know, make make little connections, like little Tinkertoys. You got a couple pieces of Tinkertoy, and you stick it together. Ah, okay. I see where we're going with that that sort of thing.
Speaker 3:And it's really, really, really important stuff. I as I mentioned, I I write this report every year, but a lot the outlet for this is soybean buyers in Asia in my particular case. But it's really interesting because I go to Asia every fall, and they tell me about what they hear about US weather reports. And one of the common things that I run into is a good example of the intersection of weather and climate and agriculture is they're always looking at the drought maps. And especially over winter because they're trying to look and see how these drought maps are going to affect the markets in the coming year.
Speaker 3:And so they interpret a drought area in the Midwest as a real negative thing going into the season. And so then I have to translate what drought really means in terms of winter drought in the Midwest relative to planting progress and springtime and how that might affect the crop over the season. So this idea that you're talking about the connection with soil moisture content and those things are is really, really critical piece that just gets a little bit left out of the really high level discussions that we get in the popular press, I think.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. And and, certainly, you know, if you have dry soils over the winter, it's something we wanna be concerned about. But, you know, you you talk to most ag producers if you want if you ask them when they wanna have drought or when they wanna have dry soils, winter and early spring, they'll take that 10 times out of 10. And they they you know, they're much happier dealing with that and hoping they get rain during the summer than the opposite way of being too wet and then turning dry midsummer.
Speaker 3:For sure.
Speaker 1:What are some of the, Dennis, of of the featured things if you had to name a couple of those that are of importance to ag producers perhaps here in Minnesota that come out of your shop in terms of materials, information with the newsletter, and so forth. But what are what do you hang your hat on so to speak?
Speaker 2:You know, I I mentioned the ag outlooks that we update about once a month during the off season, more frequently during the the the summer season. The state ag assessments, the climate ag assessments. Two that I haven't mentioned is another example of our our partnerships are working with the Midwestern Regional Climate Center, and the one we rolled out this fall was a soil temperature climatology. We didn't, in the Midwest, have a regional soil temperature climatology of understanding when we hit 50 first time we hit 50 in the spring for soil temperatures, and the first time you hit 50 on the way down in the fall. So we worked with the Midwestern Regional Climate Center out at Purdue and said, here's what I wanna do.
Speaker 2:They identified a dataset that worked across the region, and we've rolled that out this fall on their website. So you can now see the dates when we we often or usually hit those 50 degree temperatures and freezing in the spring and the fall so that people can start to look and see how those are changing and plan those activities out, from a soil management perspective. The other one that I really like this and this one was was very self serving is when we're talking about how the climate is changing, we can look, you know, all the way down to county level or sub county level for temperature and precipitation and other data. One of the things that we are seeing change is our freeze dates. You know?
Speaker 2:When things you know, last spring freeze, first fall freeze, and subsequently what how our growing season is changing. We didn't have a good way of assessing those and and and measuring those over time and looking at it on a more detailed basis because we know that can vary by location. So I we again worked with the Midwestern Regional Climate Center, and we developed a a freeze frost date tool. So you can go now down to a county level anywhere in the Upper Midwest or Northeast, and then you can look at that county level and see, on average, when we hit various temperature levels, forty, thirty two, 20 eight, 20 four, 20, I think is the different ones we look at in the spring and the fall. You can see how the trend of those is going since 1950.
Speaker 2:So you can look at a longer term trend. You can look at a shorter term trend and then see how the season length is changing overall because we are getting, especially in Minnesota, Northern Minnesota, this longer growing season, earlier spring freeze, last later fall freeze, that is opening up some opportunity to do some different things or at least think about managing different ways, longer varieties, whatever. So I I I show this frequently because I like talking about it, but it does give people an assessment of what's changing on the freeze dates and some things they might be able to do to take advantage of that.
Speaker 3:Is there a keyword that we could search Google to get to that directly? How would we get to that county? What was the
Speaker 2:Actually, you you can find the link through our website. That's one way. Or you can just Google MRCC, which is Midwestern Regional Climate Center Freeze Tool. Perfect. And that'll get you there.
Speaker 3:So this this, I wanna jump right into this because this actually this is a question that I got from the ag media just this morning. A person called a writer and said, are you concerned that farmers are going to go to the field now that we have all this you know, or what are you telling farmers relative to this warmer weather and how it's going to impact their crop? I said, well, the reality is if you want to really break this down into one thing, it's when we are going to see this last freeze. And I said, I'm no meteorologist. Well, I didn't say that, but I pretended like I was.
Speaker 3:And I said, I don't think that you can use current, you know, the past weather isn't a very good predictor of the future. And I said, that's so far out from us. I don't think that we could really predict what that last freeze is gonna be. So farmers have to utilize their best estimates on what those have been historically. So I actually would suggest that farmers actually take a look at that and get a refresher on the last freeze that they expect to see.
Speaker 3:And so that will maybe, without having a foot of snow and zero degree temperatures, maybe that'll, you know, recorrect some of this mental state we're in right now thinking that it's it's really actually April.
Speaker 2:And and the on the offside, you know, if you do get planted late for some reason or you have to do a replant, you can use this as a guide to, hey. Am I gonna be able to reach maturity on this? Well, okay. I think we're it's gonna reach maturity around this time, which there is another tool we can point you to on on corn maturity. But then when is your when are you likely to have a fall freeze?
Speaker 2:And are you at risk or are you probably, you know, are you probably gonna be okay?
Speaker 1:Fantastic. I wanted to jump in here. You know, the elephant in the room, Dennis, of course, this this winter is everything in the popular press and you know, actually ran across an article I I sent to both you and Seth this past week and that is everybody in the press likes to be a meteorologist and write and say, well, there's no snow on the ground. I haven't run my snowblower. That's because of El Nino, okay?
Speaker 1:And they said, well, now it's fading and they were gonna expect a super La Nina in there. Maybe kind of break that down when you know, first of all define a little bit you know, what is El Nino briefly. Otherwise, we're gonna run out of time here, but then get into into La Nina in in terms of that. And do we should we credit or blame everything in in terms of the fact that I haven't started my snowblower on that or something else this year.
Speaker 2:Sure. Sure. You know, there's a lot there to unpack, and and it it is really interesting. Okay. First off, we're talking about El Nino.
Speaker 2:We're talking about a change in sea surface temperatures along the Equator in the Pacific, kind of from South America out to the Central Pacific. El Nino refers to a warming of those waters. Those get warmer than average. And when that happens, the changes in sea surface temperature changes what's happening atmosphere above it, and that has some downstream effects, in other locations. It does affect South America because it's a little closer to South America and ag production down there.
Speaker 2:It also has influences across North America. The main influences we see across North America during El Nino winters are a a stronger you know, California and the Southern US tend to be more active precipitation wise, which they have been. The Upper Midwest is more likely to be warmer, which it has been. Those are the main ones. There was a graphic on this one this year talking about how much, you know, the the the El Nino winters tend to be lower snow winters from, kinda Minnesota, Wisconsin into the East.
Speaker 2:Well, they hit that in spades too. So that combined with climate change climate change is helping warmer winters also as are the the the dual players for what we've seen so far this winter. So that's played out pretty well. El Nino is starting to weaken, and it's going to weaken probably fairly rapidly in the spring. Now are we gonna get to the super La Nina, which is the opposite phase by the time we get to next winter?
Speaker 2:We'll see. I mean, it's hard to predict this that far ahead. But it does look like we're going to rapidly move between these two, and and and that's not that's a little uncommon to have that rapid transition. But, we do have some additional information now, what we know during these rapid transition, from El Nino to La Nina. And I was just talking with some national forecasting folks yesterday, pointed me to a couple papers.
Speaker 2:And the the the there is a fairly consistent message that during the summer during these, or these rapid transition from El Nino to La Nina, we tend to be warmer during those summers. And I I I looked at the paper and said, okay. I see it. Then I went and looked at some of those years and said, wow. They're they're right.
Speaker 2:You know, maybe not really warm, but we tend to be warmer. Warm summer seems to be the consistent message. Precipitation is a less consistent message, so there could be potential for ongoing drought or worsening drought depending on how precipitation looks. We don't have a good indication on that right now. The more likely outcome is, to be on the warmer side.
Speaker 2:So in Minnesota, where your season limited, you know, a bit more a bit warmer summer may be to your benefit as long as you've got soil moisture. If your soil moisture limited, that additional stress and additional crop water use with warmer temperatures might cause some more problems for you from a production perspective. Further south, the warm summer, you know, like in Iowa, could be problematic, especially in places where we're really limited. We get some really limited, soil moisture in places could be a a problem overall. So that's kind of what we're looking at.
Speaker 2:Looking towards next winter, the La Nina next winter, La Nina does have, in the wintertime, lead towards a better chance for some colder temperatures. So maybe not a bitterly cold winter, but certainly probably colder than we saw this year. Of course, that's not saying much this year.
Speaker 1:So so when you add it together, it's it's still difficult to predict obviously. You know, we we've got a ways to go here. Our our day length is longer now finally in Minnesota. You know, in terms of that we don't have snow cover basically for the southern ag part of it and a lot except for the Northwest on the ground and reflecting. So it doesn't appear in the in the near term that we're going to be exceptionally cold.
Speaker 1:Do you think we've kind of rounded the corner here a little bit and then we'll see what happens in in April in the summer?
Speaker 2:Yeah. A couple things about climatology. We are a few weeks past the average coldest time of the year. So climatology is working its way up. We are still susceptible to major cold, so it it still can happen.
Speaker 2:The outlooks are not pointing towards any big cold. Latter part of February, it looks like we'll have some some more colder periods than we've had, but really not too bitterly bad. And we still could see some snow climatologically. The latter part of winter is is the snorier part of winter. So we still put could put some on the ground.
Speaker 2:But on on that side, we're not seeing anything that indicates big snow or even big precipitation, at least in the Minnesota area right now. The plains have the better opportunity for precipitation coming up in the near term.
Speaker 3:So what I think the question is, what do we what's the what's this kind of beyond fourteen days? What do you see? What's going to happen? I I think Dave kind of gave us this idea here. We've got above average temperatures for a long period of time when we have no snow up here.
Speaker 3:And so that really, you know, leads to one direction for us. But then what do you think is gonna how how long will that how long how much time does that buy us before we get back to reality, maybe I should say?
Speaker 2:I I, you know, I've been asked the question, does that look like an an early field activity, early spring? I would not count against it. You know, I I don't see indications that things would delay us this year. So, you know, at worst, maybe near average, and I I think earlier field activity and earlier planting is definitely in the realm because we have already warm soils. We have soils that are not too wet already.
Speaker 2:We don't have snow we have to get rid of at this point. So, you know, the typical things that slow down being able to get in the fields in Minnesota in the winter aren't there right now. So, we don't necessarily see indications of being very warm in the spring, but we we you know, there's there's several things we don't have to overcome. So it certainly looks like things could move along pretty quickly in the spring once we get ready to roll.
Speaker 3:It's a really weird dynamic to to have no snow cover on these ag fields at this time of year. You know, obviously we're going to end up getting some. But we think about the traditional spring when we have all this atmospheric heating that occurs up above us. And it takes a long time to get through this white dense insulating cover to start warming that soil. And if we could go quite a ways without having appreciable snow and as an insulator, but also as that white layer, it really changes the it you know, as a as a non climatologist again, it really seems to change the the thermodynamics and the whole energetics of the system in a really big way.
Speaker 2:I you're you're dead on that, you know, snow is a good reflector of incoming solar radiation. So and and it takes a while then for that to heat up, so you need warmer air coming over it and get the snow up to right temperature where you can you can melt that. We don't have that reflect reflecting, so the soil is able to absorb that incoming solar radiation, and there's not a lot of moisture in the soil, which is the other thing that can contribute is wet soils don't heat up as fast because you have to evaporate water and you have to heat up the water in the soils. We don't have that. So as long as we're getting sunlight and we're gonna get more sunlight and and higher sun angle, those soils will start responding pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:And we didn't you know, without having a lot of cold early and only a little bit of cold in in the middle part of of of the winter, soils don't you know, they're not that cold. And, you know, even even down here in Iowa, you know, we got cold, but we had snow over our soils during that really cold period. So, you know, the frost step didn't go very deep, and, we have very little frost on the ground, only a few places, I think.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And we might have a better chance of getting some soil recharge in terms of this drought side, which is the other thing here that we've encountered. We've overcome some of that, but we still have lower soil moistures, as you mentioned. But having that dark surface, where in Minnesota we don't get much value for that snow cover in terms of soil recharge, because again, there's a lot of loss to the atmosphere or then runoff while we've got frozen soil. So we have an opportunity for any rainfall or, sorry, precipitation events to actually add something to our soil profile between now and planting.
Speaker 1:I wanted to jump in there. So Dennis, you know, you you track that on the on the drought on the drought maps and so forth. Are are we still officially in some level of drought here in the Upper Midwest in Minnesota at this point in time? Know, everyone's saying, you know, the ratio of snow and moisture, it isn't gonna help help us. We we really need those April rains or how how concerned are you?
Speaker 2:My level of concern varies on who we're talking to. Okay. And and and here's why. The drought monitor does have some coverage in in Minnesota. It's not too bad.
Speaker 2:I don't think anything is higher than d one, maybe a little bit of d two. There's still some dryness depicted because of of the ongoing dryness. We've kept all the big drought levels, the d two, d three in Iowa, just to keep it from you Minnesota folks.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much. We appreciate that.
Speaker 2:But the we've had a real problem because, we have had some wintertime precipitation, but we've got some you know, if you look back at the precipitation deficits going last year or even back a couple years, the the deficits we built up over the last few years are actually pretty substantial. So, you know, when we've had some of these winter precipitation events, which have have been pretty good for the winter, at least in southern parts of Minnesota and early on, Recently, there's not been as much, especially throughout most of the state. You do wanna depict some improvement, but you wanna be very careful because we still have some very long term deficits. And some of my National Weather Service colleagues have pointed out that groundwater levels in places are still low. So you've got multiple levels that you have soil moisture that you have to recharge.
Speaker 2:You have to get water back into groundwater. We have to get water in streams, which are low. So we just need water in the system, period. So, like, the big the big snow winter you had last year was great because at least you got a lot of runoff. I don't think we're gonna get that this year because we have to put a lot of snow on the ground really quickly if we're gonna get a lot of runoff.
Speaker 2:So that will we can you know, the moisture will help recharge the soil moisture, but we do have these groundwater and other issues that we have to be aware of too.
Speaker 1:Well, I think certainly, you know, you you think about, you know, we need we need a little moisture for germination here in the spring and so forth. But people understand that but they know that you know, you have a deeper rooted crop whether it's alfalfa or corn in groundwater. So I think that there is that concern in the background probably more so than a homeowner with their bluegrass lawn would be so to speak, know, because it can turn on the sprinkler system. But you know, a grower in these cases in the situation with that. So you know, we talk about things you could do to not overwork the soil, keep it in place, not to dry it out, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's some things that I think they're gonna have to be come into play here. Probably still better to do some of those things be safe and and not have a problem later on.
Speaker 2:I mean and you can do things like, you know, what if your soil moisture really is limited, you know, maybe don't look for high end yields. Maybe you fertilize to a bit lower yields or maybe you drop your plant populations a little bit or something like that. There are some different things you can do to try to try to reduce some of the risk related to this. And the unfortunate aspect is somewhat drier soils. Rooting depth is better during some of these these these drier soils that can help you later on.
Speaker 2:Though, again, those deeper profiles may be tapped out a bit at this point, so there may not be as much soil moisture deep in the profile that they can get access to. We know that's a problem in some places in the Upper Midwest.
Speaker 3:Well, we There is a lot of time left. Are are don't we have a lot of time to catch a lot of rain? I mean Yes. Or
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. No question. No question. So
Speaker 3:I but I I'm I get caught in this because I'm always telling people, don't worry. We always get June rains. Don't worry. Get it planted. Don't worry.
Speaker 3:It's fine. And then we've had three dry years here that have really embarrassed me because it hasn't we haven't had the kind of, you know, late spring, early summer rainfalls that we got a little bit last year in Southern Minnesota, but we just haven't had quite I guess last year was more of a midsummer event, but we've, you know, we've had a couple really unusual years, three very unusual years in a row.
Speaker 1:Well, think one thing in Minnesota, Will, is we'll see what happens. Dennis, maybe talk to you more in March because we have this other thing in the state and that's called the crop insurance. And the crop insurance dates when when you're supposed to when before when you can or can't be out there. So that that's a little bit of a, you know, a throttle on on all of this in, you know, in early April. So, you know, when we see those thirty day outlooks in late March, we'll see what goes see what goes on there.
Speaker 1:But certainly you know, we would like the rain in you know in April as some of our other meteorologists have always said, but it's kind of a dance because people you know want to be planting you know early. And I know Seth says, plant your soybeans early. At least he has some coworkers that does that. But the bottom line is you know, have those things that you have to be aware of here to some extent no matter what the initial forecast is.
Speaker 3:So at least we can blame it on blame the feds for crop insurance. If we can't get people slowed up, can at least use the scapegoat as RMA or crop insurance
Speaker 1:or something here. Well, Dennis works for the USDA, so we'll have to be careful about that. So it makes a makes a difference there in terms of that. But you still are maintaining some of the other tools. I think there was the old the old corn, U2U, or you wanna I mean, some of those things you wanna just mention out there.
Speaker 1:I thought there's are very valid. I mean, those are are things that agronomists like myself like to look at.
Speaker 2:I yeah. It's a corn grow integrated tool. It's been around about ten years now. Or I think it's it's that we first rolled it out. It was a project when I was in South Dakota.
Speaker 2:It was a USDA NIFA funded project. And, I I thought it was kinda funny because the project had five state climatologists involved with it, and I and I thought, wow. That was pretty remarkable. But all the northern state climatologists said, we gotta do something with growing degree days because we get that same question. You know?
Speaker 2:I'm putting in. I'm having a replant. I've planted. It's been a cool summer. How close, you know, are we gonna make maturity and those kinds of things?
Speaker 2:So we wanted something to be able to track what was going on with growing degree days. So, yes, we're doing that. We're diving in a little bit more on on on some more related to that related to some specialty crops that, you know, chilling hours and and, you know, degree day accumulations before freeze. Those are even more complicated because when you're dealing with perennials you know, corn and soybeans, you can least wait to plant. When perennials are ready to go, they're gonna go, and and there's not a whole lot we can do to solve that.
Speaker 2:So so
Speaker 3:Are you getting requests for smoke models too with all the smoke that we've had the last few years? Is that the next thing that you're gonna get?
Speaker 2:Not as much models. It's been, okay. What effect does the smoke have? And, Seth, I assume you're probably like the rest of us. You're kinda going, well, okay.
Speaker 2:There's this, and there's this, and there's this. And you add them all up, and we're not sure if the That's zero.
Speaker 1:So Dennis, we're gonna give you the last word here. Is anything that you want to bring up or talk about here that we didn't discuss at this point already?
Speaker 2:I I think we hit some of the tools and what we do. And just say, I guess, that we look we value the partnership of our partners. We love talking with Minnesota folks. I I I very much enjoy coming up there and working with you folks, sharing information, so that producers, advisers, whatever, have the information available as they're going through their growing season and looking at what their operation's gonna be doing in the future.
Speaker 1:Well, excellent. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate having having you on. This is what Dennis Totti. He's director of the Midwest Climate Hub down in the Ames, Iowa Iowa area with USDA.
Speaker 1:And yes, you're Iowa State today. And so we appreciate you taking the opportunity to visit with us and we will be back in contact. We know where to find you with that.
Speaker 3:I think we're gonna have more questions for you. So we'll be back.
Speaker 2:We love questions and thanks for having me on. It's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Well, you very much. So thanks again for Dennis for coming on, we appreciate this. I'm Dave Nicolai with University of Minnesota Extension, educator in field crops and my cohost Doctor. Seth Nave, University of Minnesota Extension soybean specialist. And thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time.
