At the beginning of the second ten-day period a slight cooling took place resulting in a short-term decrease in air temperature at night to minus 5-11 °C throughout the country. The average regional ten-day air temperature ranged from 4.7 °С in the east of the country to 7.8 °С in the south of the country. The minimum air temperature dropped to minus 5-9 °С, and in the Zaporizhzhya, Luhansk, Odesa, Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv regions – to minus 9-11 °С.
Precipitation was observed for 1-4 days throughout the country in the form of rain, and in the western and northeastern areas there was rain with wet snow. In most areas, the amount per ten-day period did not exceed 2-7 mm (25-75% of the norm). And only in certain areas of the Kirovograd, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Transcarpathian regions the ten-day rainfall reached 91-106% of the norm.
As of March 20, the reserves of productive moisture in the tilth-top soil under winter crops in most areas were sufficient – from 21 to 40 mm. In many areas of the western, separate areas of the central, Zhytomyr and Chernihiv regions the tilth-top soil was waterlogged – 41-50 mm of productive moisture. Insufficient moistening of 0-20 cm of the soil layer was observed in some areas of the southern and Dnipropetrovsk regions – 11-20 mm of productive moisture; in some places in Odesa and Kherson regions, the moisture content in the tilth-top layer was only 5-9 mm.
Winter crops were in phases of tillering, the formation of nodal roots, in separate areas there was formation of the 3rd leaf. In some areas of the southern regions, an extremely early period began the growth of the stem on crops of winter wheat. The condition of the crops is mostly good and satisfactory. In many fields of the Zaporizhzhya, Kherson and Odesa regions, winter crops were damaged by agricultural pests and rodents. In winter rape in most areas the formation of a leaf rosette and stem growth continued, in the central and southern regions the formation of inflorescences was noted. The condition of the crops is mostly good and satisfactory. During the ten-day period sowing of spring barley continued. In previously sown areas, germination of grain was observed.