Keith Edmisten, Professor of Crop Science and Extension Cotton Specialist
The DD60s predicted for the 5 days following planting at Rocky Mount are included in the table below. Planting conditions are not as good as we have been having as a cool front is moving in, but certainly something we can deal with. I used weather.com for the weather predictions used in the chart below. Thankfully, both WRAL and WNCT are predicting more rain for today and tomorrow than weather.com. We really need this rain as soils in many areas have dried out and none of the weather services seem to be predicting decent chances of rain from May 16-21.
I am concerned that as soils dried out, some growers planted deeper to try to get to moisture and the rains coming in could cause crusting problems. Should you encounter crusting problems, you can find information about it here: http://www.cotton.ncsu.edu/ccn/2007/may22.html
| Planting date | Daily DD60s | DD60s for next 5 days | Planting condition | Chance of rain |
| May 15 | 15 | 30 | Good | 20 |
| 16 | 4 | 20.5 | Marginal | 20 |
| 16 | 4.5 | 28 | Good | 0 |
| 18 | 4 | 37 | Good | 10 |
| 17 | 2.5 | 49.5 | Good | 10 |
| 20 | 5.5 | 60 | Very Good | 10 |
| 21 | 11.5 | | | 0 |
| 22 | 13 | | | 30 |
| 23 | 16.5 | | | 30 |
| 24 | 13.5 | | | 30 |
| Predicted DD60 accumulation for five days following planting | Outlook for planting |
| < 10 | Very poor |
| 11-15 | Poor |
| 16-25 | Marginal |
| 25-50 | Good |
| >50 | Very good |
Source:ncsu.edu