Manitoba · Boreal North & Taiga · hardiness zone 3b
Now
14°C · Overcast
Today
18° / 7°
Rain, 7 days
12 mm
Season
Fall · frost in ~17 d
The kindest day for transplanting there is, and the safest for sowing.
Writing your field guide — reading the forecast, the moon and the map…
Overhead · Thompson, Manitoba
The two clocks nothing on the ground can argue with: the length of the day, and the phase of the moon.
The sun
12h 46m of light
Sunrise
07:03
Solar noon
13:26
Sunset
19:49
A month from now the day will be 2h 17m shorter. Enough light for steady growth.
Right now · Thompson, Manitoba
Nothing here is a guess. Each of these is read from this week's forecast and this location's climate record, and each one is pushing the season one way or the other.
10.5 °C soil · 12.2 mm
Steady breakdown. Worms and fungi are moving last year's leaves into this year's soil.
Fungi and bacteria turning last season into next season's soil. The same warm, wet window that runs a compost heap also fruits the mushrooms.
12.2 mm / 7 days
12.2 mm across 2 days — short of the ~25 mm a week most beds want. Top up the thirstiest rows.
Sets the pace for everything: germination, fungal fruiting, slug nights, and how a river runs for the next three days.
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The moon
Waxing Crescent
11% lit · waxing · day 3 of 29.5
Planting by the moon: New to first quarter: sow leafy crops and anything harvested for its leaves — lettuce, spinach, brassicas, herbs.
Fishing: good — feeding peaks in the days either side of new and full, and around moonrise and moonset.
Turn of the season
Fall equinox
Sep 22 · 7 days away
About 17 days to the average first frost (Oct 1).
Next moons
17 days
Average first fall frost is around Oct 1. Nothing you sow now will finish unless it beats that.
The hard edge of the growing season. Ice inside a leaf ruptures its cells — one night ends a tomato and sweetens a parsnip.
10.5 °C
Good for brassicas, beets, chard, carrots and potatoes. Wait on the heat crops.
Seeds read soil temperature, not the calendar. Six centimetres down is where the decision gets made.
12h 46m
Losing about 5 minutes of daylight a day.
The one thing weather can't change. Plants count photoperiod to decide when to bolt, bulb, flower and go dormant.
Waxing Crescent · 11%
Waxing, 3 days old. Full moon in 11 days. Fishing outlook: good.
It moves water — in the sea, in a lake's edge, and, by long tradition, in the sap of a plant. Fish feed hardest on the days around new and full.
Found near Thompson · September
41 species have been recorded within about 40 km of here in September, from verified public observations. These are the ones we have written up, ordered by how often they turn up.
Dangerous look-alike1 record within 40 km this month
Dangerous look-alike1 record within 40 km this month
Recorded near you this month. We have no identification guidance for these, so treat them as a list of things to go and learn — from a regional key or someone who knows them — not as a list of things to pick.
Fungi

shingled hedgehog
Sarcodon imbricatus
5 records nearby

Larch Waxy Cap
Hygrophorus speciosus
2 records nearby

Shaggy Mane
Coprinus comatus
1 record nearby

Slimy Spike
Gomphidius glutinosus
1 record nearby
common puffball
Lycoperdon perlatum
1 record nearby

gassy webcap
Cortinarius traganus
1 record nearby

Orange Jelly Spot
Dacrymyces chrysospermus
1 record nearby

pinelitter gingertail
Xeromphalina cauticinalis
1 record nearby

white-rot fungus
Trametes pubescens
1 record nearby

flame bonnet
Mycena strobilinoidea
1 record nearby

blotched woodwax
Hygrophorus erubescens
1 record nearby
Northern Red Belt
Fomitopsis mounceae
1 record nearby
Plants

Lingonberry
Vaccinium vitis-idaea
4 records nearby

bearberry
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi
4 records nearby

fireweed
Chamaenerion angustifolium
4 records nearby
·
Photographs and records from iNaturalist, used under their open licences and credited to their photographers.
Next
Coming into season in the next month or two near Thompson, Manitoba. Seasons shift a week or two with the weather, so treat these as things to keep an eye on rather than dates.