Pam Knox

  • The Great Savannah Fire of 1820

    Today is the anniversary of the Great Savannah Fire of January 11, 1820, which destroyed over 500 building and costing roughly $4 million (equivalent to $90 million in 2024) in damages. The fire was caused by months of very dry conditions followed by a day with strong winds from the northwest. The high winds fanned…

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  • The latest Drought Monitor, released today, shows that nearly the entire region of the Southeast is now covered by drought, with only 0.36 percent of the area (in upstate Virginia) not experiencing any dry conditions at all. The area of severe drought (D2) almost doubled from 16 to 31 percent of the region. Puerto Rico…

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  • The annual overview of the worst disasters in the US was formerly collected by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. While some people question its relevance, it does provide a decent overview of how much weather and climate impacted our country this past year. But with the downsizing of NOAA this past year, the billion-dollar-disaster…

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  • While drought has completely disappeared from California for the first time in years due to heavy rainfall from atmospheric rivers this fall, it is still very much present in the Colorado River basin. The result is drastically lower Colorado River levels, leading to reductions or even cut-offs in irrigation water in areas that depend on…

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  • The latest ENSO outlook was posted today by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. It shows that La Nina conditions are still present in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific Ocean, but they are weakening. The new forecast is still indicating that the La Nina is likely to swing back to neutral conditions during the January through March period…

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  • Are you tired of cloudy conditions and the lack of sunshine? Do you have Seasonal Affective Disorder because it is so dark and gloomy all winter? While we get more sunshine here in the Southeast than my childhood home in western Michigan where the lake effect dominates the weather most of the winter, we still…

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  • Happy New Year!

    Sadly, I am writing this right after Georgia’s loss to Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl, but in spite of that, I wish you a great year and thank you for your continued support of the blog! Weather makes all of our lives more interesting.

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