There are six regional climate centers across the US.  While the Southeast is covered by the Southeast Regional Climate Center, each of the centers has a variety of tools that can be used across the country to provide weather and climate data.  Today we will focus on the Midwestern Regional Climate Center and look at some of the products they have to provide climate data we can use in the Southeast.  Their main website is https://mcc.sws.uiuc.edu/.

One of my favorite tools at MCC is the cli-MATE site.  This website requires a free account sign-up and provides the user with daily and hourly climate data from the National Weather Service observers across the country for their period of records.  There are a number of tools there to sort by threshold value and look at summary statistics like monthly and annual data as well as download historical data.  The direct link is https://mrcc.isws.illinois.edu/CLIMATE/.

Another useful source of information at MCC is their Vegetation Impact Program.  This part of the website provides national maps of frost and freeze data as well as degree day accumulations and other crop-related products.  The map below shows the accumulated corn stress degree days from the beginning of the year.  The direct link to this program is at https://mrcc.isws.illinois.edu/VIP/.

A third useful tool is their GIS-based tornado track tool at https://mrcc.isws.illinois.edu/gismaps/cntytorn.htm.  This zoomable tool allows you to sort by intensity, date and injuries and display by map or county.

I invite you to visit their web site and see all of the useful information they have for the US.

corn stress degree days 6-28-2015