Climate and Ag in the news
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Now here’s a story you don’t see every day. According to this CBS Colorado report, “Two southeastern Colorado ranch owners were recently sentenced to pay $6.6 million to resolve federal charges that they damaged or altered rain gauges in an effort to get paid for worsening drought conditions. By preventing the rain gauges from accurately…
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Those of you who work with teens may be interested in this recent story by Yale Climate Connections on a new video game that helps teach teens how to navigate various weather disasters and how to stay calm — even amid confusion and chaos. I haven’t tried it out, but you might want to take…
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With the end of the official winter season, now is a good time to compare the winter outlooks for the Farmers’ Almanac and NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. A quick look shows that the CPC did a much better job of depicting our wet and warm winter than either of the almanacs did. We don’t know…
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Every March, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (known as CoCoRaHS for short) hosts a competition between states to see which state can recruit the most new observers. In the past, they have called this March Madness, but after concerns about the college basketball tournament not looking kindly on that name, they have…
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Do you like mustard on your hot dog? Or is ketchup your jam? (I use both.) Are you a hot-sauce lover? You may be interested in this article from Modern Farmer discussing how extreme weather around the world has affected the production of several popular condiments, including all three of the above. Shortages in some…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
Most locations in the Southeast are now experiencing early spring except for Virginia and higher elevations of the Southern Appalachians. Officially in climatology, spring is defined as the months of February, March, and April. Here in Athens we are past crocuses and daffodils and starting to see redbuds bloom. It won’t be long until we…
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While the weather lately has been fairly mild, there has been enough cold weather over the winter that most fruit trees have received sufficient chill hours to be ready to bloom once we get warm for long enough. In fact, some very early varieties have already started to blossom, according to reports from some South…