The yearly variability of the weather is a risk factor for maize yields. In particular, extreme temperature and precipitation conditions or their unfavorable combinations, especially at certain critical developmental stages of maize, greatly influence yields, i.e. it is evident that yearly monitoring of basic meteorological parameters is essential to study maize development.

The results of the long-term experiments at Debrecen-Látókép, established in 1983, and the related meteorological observations form a database that serves as a reliable basis for examining the effect of weather conditions on yield averages. In this summary, continuing the practice of previous years, we examined the weather conditions of the growing season of 2020 and the previous autumn-winter period.

As a result of the analysis, we found that the autumn-winter period before the 2020 growing season was characterised by a slightly higher-than-average precipitation in an extreme distribution, which was accompanied by significantly warmer-than-average temperature conditions, especially in the autumn months of 2019.

During the sowing-germination period, significant rainfall deficits and cooler-than-average weather adversely affected the development of maize, which lasted until the end of May. Subsequently, abundant rainfall and average heat wave-free temperature conditions provided favorable conditions for the development of maize from the intensive vegetative stage. The persistently dry and warm weather that characterised most of September helped the ripening process, the final phase of which was adversely affected by the weather turning cold and rainy.

Keywords: maize, weather, precipitation, temperature, heat sum