Climate at the mast normal for November 11
"Normal" is the 1991-2020 average for this spot, the period the National Weather Service uses; "most years" is the range that holds 8 years in 10. The station's own record is only since 2018, so these normals are built from nearby long-record stations and how the mast compares with them (how, below).
The past year against normal
Freeze odds at the mast
| Spring | Chance of a freeze after this date | Hard freeze (28°) |
|---|---|---|
| March 25 | 97% | 70% |
| April 1 | 83% | 47% |
| April 10 | 53% | 10% |
| April 20 | 23% | 0% |
| April 30 | 10% | 0% |
| May 10 | 0% | 0% |
| May 20 | 0% | 0% |
| Fall | Chance the first freeze has come by this date | Hard freeze (28°) |
|---|---|---|
| September 25 | 3% | 0% |
| October 1 | 3% | 0% |
| October 10 | 17% | 0% |
| October 20 | 47% | 3% |
| October 31 | 83% | 17% |
| November 10 | 97% | 63% |
| November 20 | 100% | 90% |
A freeze is a low of 32° or colder at the mast (5 feet up; the grass can frost on nights a few degrees warmer). Typical last spring freeze April 11, first fall freeze October 21, from 30 years. This year the first came October 18.
Growing degree days
| Since May 1, through | Normal |
|---|---|
| June 1 | 428 |
| July 1 | 1,063 |
| August 1 | 1,781 |
| September 1 | 2,439 |
| October 1 | 2,910 |
| November 1 | 3,154 |
| This year, to November 11 | 3,249 normal 3,190 |
Corn growing degree days (base 50°, capped at 86°), from the normal daily highs and lows of every year 1991-2020, counted from May 1. Corn needs roughly 2,500 to 3,000 from planting to maturity, depending on the hybrid.
How these normals were made
The station's own record runs January 2018 to now (3,091 days with a usable high and low: the station's monthly reports through early 2023, its minute logs since), too short for a normal: any one date would swing by a few degrees with the luck of which years were warm or cold. So the normals borrow 30 years from five nearby NOAA cooperative stations and translate them to the mast:
- For every day of the year, the days the station and each neighbor both recorded show how the mast's readings line up against that neighbor's: on the highs a small, steady difference; on the lows a fuller translation, because the mast differs most on some kinds of nights.
- Each neighbor's own 1991-2020 record is put through that translation: thirty years of what the mast would have read.
- The five are averaged, weighted by how closely each tracks the station from day to day.
Cooperative observers read their thermometers once a day, most at about 7 AM, so their "daily" high is mostly the afternoon before; each neighbor is lined up with the station's calendar days before it is compared, and its readings are used as recorded on both sides, so that reading-time habit cancels out.
Checked by leaving out one of the station's years at a time and predicting it from the rest: the monthly averages came out 0.5° from what the station measured, against 1.1° for the neighbors as they are. What it found: the mast's highs match the neighbors' official normals closely, but its lows run about 2° milder than theirs (the official normals below are the neighbors' averages, for comparison). That fits the mast's spot: it sits on a local high point, with the ground falling away to the south, so on clear, calm nights the coldest air drains off it into the low ground.
| Neighbor | Miles | Weight | Days compared |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marion 2 N | 11 | 22% | 2,978 |
| Wabash | 8.5 | 20% | 3,053 |
| Huntington | 21.5 | 18% | 3,084 |
| Kokomo 3 WSW | 23 | 21% | 3,069 |
| Hartford City 4 ESE | 32.5 | 20% | 3,066 |
Station extremes and monthly summaries: Station records. Normals rebuilt 2026-10-20.