The Illinois Degree Day calculator has been available to Illinois producers since 2004. Hosted by the Illinois Climate Network (ICN), this pest management tool was developed to help aid producers in monitoring insect development throughout the growing season and aid in pest management decisions.
The calculator uses weather data from 19 network stations across Illinois to provide degree day accumulations and forecasts for 30 agricultural and invasive pests based on long-term averages. While this has been a great resource for many years, technology has changed, along with how information is disseminated.
Our main goal is to provide a calculator for priority pests for Illinois growers and deliver that information in way that is most useful and effective for them. In order to do that, we need your help. During February and March, we are collecting feedback from a short survey at https://go.illinois.edu/PDDSurvey. The information we collect will be used to design new tools to better communicate with growers.
The current plan is to have the new tools available by the end of 2020. During this time, the pest degree day calculator will remain available at the WARM website (https://www.isws.illinois.edu/warm/).