NDAWN stations = weather data gold. Data collected at 12 North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network ( NDAWN ) weather stations located throughout northwest Minnesota (Figure 1) can provide a snapshot of weather throughout the valley. Figure 1. Twelve NDAWN weather stations in northwest Minnesota collect critical weather data all year long. One only need take a passing glance at the monthly rainfall totals (Figure 2) to see what made 2020 harvest and field operations so much less headache-inducing than both normal and the seemingly never-ending nightmare that was 2019. Let’s take a tour of the Red River Valley from Sabin and Ulen in Clay and Becker Counties, all the way up to Greenbush and Kennedy in Roseau and Kittson Counties, respectively. Being sure to pay attention to the different scales on each location graph’s y-axis, compare monthly normal (grey lines), 2019 (gold lines) and 2020 (maroon lines) rainfall totals. You can also easily jump to a summary of the rainfa...
