Pam Knox

  • The latest Drought Monitor released this morning shows no change in the drought status from last week. Last week’s map also showed no change from the week before.  What will  happen next week?  Rain in the last day (after the cut-off for today’s map) may help reduce the drought more, but we will have to…

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  • NOAA released their monthly climate summary for the United States for January 2017.  It shows that overall the US was wetter and warmer than average, although of course there was variation across the country. For Georgia, for example, it was ranked 117 out of 123 years for temperature (7th warmest) and 118 out of 123…

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  • I gave a talk on projections of future climate today to a group of farmers and other interested folk in LaGrange, GA.  One of the things we discussed in the talk is how weather and climate forecasts are similar and how they are different, because they are really designed to do different things even though…

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  • According to the USA-NPN’s Spring Indices, spring is arriving 20 days earlier than a long-term average (1981-2010) in much of the Southeastern US. The Extended Spring Indices are models that predict the onset of early spring plants across the United States. You can see these maps as well as maps of Accumulated Growing Degree Days…

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  • Our changing water future

    Earlier this month NASA published a study showing that 1/3 of big groundwater basins across the earth were in distress.  One of them was what they list as the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains aquifer, which provides irrigation and drinking water to a large area of south Georgia, Alabama, Florida and other states around the Gulf…

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  • The weather forecast for this weekend in Australia shows an unbelievably hot continent, with temperatures at many inland places well over 110 F.  The forecast map posted here for February 11 shows that there is a large area of 45 C plus (that’s 113 F, folks) across the eastern half of the country.  While it is…

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  • As severe weather, including devastating tornadoes, moves across the South today (read more here), it’s eerily timely that The Seeker published a story just yesterday on the increase in tornado outbreaks in the South due to warmer weather.  This year so far temperatures have been much above normal, leading to two tornado outbreaks in January…

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