Season 2022: Weather update

Jeff Franklin from AAFC Kentville is bringing the weekly weather update. Thanks to him, we’re able to observe graphs showing the evolution of the climate at the beginning and throughout the growing season. Similar to last week, in this publication it’s possible to see the degree days accumulation in the air.

The first table shows the temperature base 5⁰ C and 10⁰ C from 2019 until 2022 accumulated from March 1 until May 9. At the end of each section, it’s possible to see the average of the last 5 and 10 years respectively.

Category	2019	2020	2021	2022	5 year average	10 year average
Plant development (Base 5ºC)	138.8	91.1	168.3	125.0	144.6	142.1
Insect development (Base 10º)	41.3	16.2	52.2	26.6	47.3	48.0

Figure 1. Degree day accumulations as of May 9, 2022.  All data are taken from the Kentville weather station, based on a start date of March 1, and calculated using the single sine method.

2022 has been moving slowly this year, especially if it’s compared with 2021. This table shows how the season 2021 presents the higher accumulation of degree days than in the last years until May 9, both for 5 and 10 degrees Celsius, especially compared with 2020. The weekly values when compared with the average of the last 5 and 10 years, 2022 shows even lower temperature accumulated compared to last week. Important to mention that this week the temperatures are expected to increase above average temperatures, which will increase 2022 values in the next publication.

In the following column graph, you can see the values from 2004 until 2021 and at the end the average of the last 5 and 10 years respectively.

Figure 2. Degree day accumulations as of May 9, 2022 base 10⁰ C. All data are taken from the Kentville weather station, based on a start date of March 1, and calculated using the single sine method.

In the graph, we can clearly observe the difference between the last 3 years in the accumulation based on 10⁰ C. The trends and observations are like last week, until now 2022 is even lower than 2019, which was one of the coldest years. Despite that, 2020 looks quite cold until May 9, being even lower than 2019. As previously mentioned, the increase of temperatures through this week will increase the accumulation of degree days and accelerate plant physiology as well.