July started wet and turned hot quickly. The deluge on the night of July 1-2 dumped 73 millimetres of rain in six hours, equivalent to almost a month’s worth of rain. The remainder of the week was pretty dry with only 1 mm of additional precipitation, but it was just like Florida most of the week – hot and humid!
There were three days in the first week of July when the daytime highs exceeded 30 degrees Celsius, and there were three more days when the temperature gauge reached 28-29 C. So, it’s no surprise that the average temperature for the first week was 23.9 C, almost three degrees higher than the normal for the whole month, which is 21.1 C. The humidex was through the roof for most of the week and both daytime highs and night-time lows were well above average!
The corn heat unit (CHU) count for the week was also higher than normal for the first time this summer. There were 233 CHU in the first week, which was a good bit higher than the prorated normal of 206 CHU based on 799 CHU for the entire month. Since the May 10 start date for the heat unit count, the total recorded is now 1235 CHU for the 2023 cropping season. Normal for the same time period in previous years is 1269 CHU; so, pretty close on a relative basis.
More rain and heat for the coming week – the corn must be loving it!
