Pam Knox

  • Atacama Desert in bloom

    The Atacama Desert in Chile, normally one of the driest places on Earth, was recently photographed covered by millions of pink mallows.  Heavy rains in March provided some areas with up to seven years’ worth of rain in 12 hours.  You can see pictures and read a description here.  While the story does not say…

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  • About first dates (of snow)

    Deke Arndt of the National Centers for Environment Information posted another informative (and funny) blog on first snow dates in NOAA’s Climate.gov blog, Beyond the Data. You can read it at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/first-dates. In the Southeast, it is difficult to do good scientific studies of snowfall because the data are not very complete.  Snow does not fall…

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  • Here comes the remains of Patricia

    The satellite and streamline maps today show a newly developed coastal low pressure center (which spun up from the remnant circulation of former Major Hurricane Patricia) as it moves east across the Southeast today.   You can see the dynamic version of the streamflow analysis at https://earth.nullschool.net/.  The swirl of winds ahead of the storm’s center…

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  • Measurements of sea level have shown that sea level in most areas of the world is increasing.  This is due to the impacts of warming ocean water, which expands as it gets warmer, plus the additional water added to the oceans by the melting of glaciers and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.  The impacts of…

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  • Impacts of cold mornings on peanuts

    Rome Ethredge of Seminole Crop E News provided some good advice for peanut farmers looking to dig peanuts when temperatures are near 32 °F.  If it is too close to freezing you can get significant damage to peanuts resting on the ground if they have too much moisture. You can read his blog post at https://seminolecropnews.wordpress.com/2015/10/23/cold-weather-and-peanuts/.

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  • According to a recent news story in CBS News, a new study published in Environmental Research Letters projects that the onset of spring plant growth will shift up by an average of three weeks by the year 2100 due to climate change trends.  The trend to warmer temperatures are expected to shift the dates of first…

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  • Seven climate data tools

    There are many sources of climate data online.  I’ve discussed a number of them before, and you can find them by searching this blog for the category “Sources of weather and climate data.”  Here are a few more tools that you can use to look at trends in climate and some other related information over…

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