October 2023
-
There are many sayings in folklore about how to predict the upcoming winter based on phenological observations of persimmon seeds, the coats of animals, and when birds fly south. Observations of woolly bear caterpillars and their comparative amounts of brown and black stripes is one that I get asked about from time to time. Here…
-
If you are a CoCoRaHS precipitation observer, you may be interested in this new website that allows you to check out the climatology of your station at https://dex.cocorahs.org/?skip=0&take=50. If you don’t know what CoCoRaHS is, check out their website at https://cocorahs.org/ and consider joining a great citizen science project measuring precipitation across the nations of…
-
High pressure will dominate the week, leaving all of the Southeast high and dry for the next seven days. Temperatures should be quite moderate and no chance of frost is seen in the long-range forecasts until the first week of November, although any forecast over a week out should be taken with some caution. The…
Posted in: Climate outlooks -
NOAA released their latest 3-month predictions for November through January today. The maps show a clear El Nino signal in precipitation with wet conditions expected across southern AL and GA and northern FL, as expected from previous strong El Nino events. Temperature predictions show warmer than normal conditions across the northern part of the US…
Posted in: Climate outlooks -
If you watch the weather forecasts carefully, either for regular weather or for tropical storms, you probably already know that meteorologists use multiple models to help make their predictions of what the weather is likely to be and how storm systems will move across an area. Forbes has a great description of why forecasters use…
-
The latest Drought Monitor, released today, shows the expansion of drought across most of the region, especially in northern and western parts of the states. Florida was the only state that saw an improvement in dry conditions, and Puerto Rico showed no change from last week. With relatively light rainfall amounts expected this week, it…
Posted in: Drought -
You might expect that in an El Nino winter, the chance of freezing nights would go up, since El Nino winters are generally cooler than average. I decided to test that by looking at the number of nights that the minimum temperature got below 32 F and seeing if years with El Nino had more…