To much surprise the first flower of 2016 season has already opened today! The plant to claim this title goes to one single snowdrop ( Galanthus elwesii ) that decided to take the plunge and open today in the brilliant sunshine and high of 48.F that we had. This is by far much earlier than last years first bloom which occurred on March 10th 2015 with snow crocus taking that prize. The reason for the much earlier flower is simply that Snowdrops are a new addition to my garden that were not present last year. Still this is the first time I have ever seen a flower of any kind bloom in the month of January so still quite an amazing achievement to reach and honestly when I saw it pop 2 days ago I didn’t think it would have a chance to flower before the next snowstorm comes in on Tuesday. I have a couple dozen of these planted around the garden but only so far I’ve only seen this one and one other sprouting on my southwest exposure garden. The average first Snowdrop bloom is typically the last week of February but it is not unheard of for them to bloom here by Groundhogs Day. I’m not concerned about cold and snow coming with this hardy plant, it will just close up and open when warmth returns!
Today continued a warm spell that has been in place for about 5 days now we’ve had mostly 30s and 40s for highs but the warmest day ( Saturday ) it was 50.F here in the Des Moines area. The patchy snowcover we had before the warm spell was completely wiped away leaving the southern 1/3rd of Iowa snowless. Northern Iowa still continuous snowcover so because of this highs were held in the upper 30s to lower 40s this past week. These types of warm spells are nothing new to Iowa for this time of year as it is normal throughout winter to get occasional warm spells in between cold and snowy spells.
Highs Saturday 1/30/16
Shenandoah 52.F
Lamoni 52.F
Cumming 50.F
Ankeny 50.F
Keokuk 50.F
Omaha/Council Bluffs 50.F
Des Moines Airport 49.F
Fairfield 46.F
Iowa City 46.F
Davenport 45.F
Ames 45.F
Cedar Rapids 44.F
Marshalltown 43.F
Carroll 43.F
Sioux City 43.F
Decorah 43.F
Waterloo/Cedar Falls 42.F
Dubuque 40.F
Mason City 38.F
Storm Lake 37.F
Estherville 37.F