With the unseasonably warm temperatures occurring earlier this year, we asked black cutworm monitoring participants to place moth traps during the end of March. The first moth was recorded in Muscatine County on March 20. Peak flights have been reported by cooperators in many parts of Iowa this year. Our predictions of cutting dates (the date when black cutworm larvae are likely to be damaging corn) are based on recorded peak flights which took place near the end of March and approximately two weeks later in Iowa. The map (Fig. 1) shows the predicted cutting dates for Iowa climate divisions. Where there are two dates, the top date is an estimate based on moth captures that occurred near the end of March; all other dates are based on mid-April captures
