Climate and Ag in the news
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You’ve probably heard about the “urban heat island”, which is a pocket of warm temperatures created by pavement and buildings in the center of cities. It’s not surprising that Atlanta and other large cities have well-documented “heat islands” that make the cities warmer than surrounding areas. A bit more surprising is that even moderate sized…
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California’s four years of drought is now having another agricultural impact on farmers besides the shortages of water for irrigation in some areas. Livestock producers are starting to find their springs and wells drying up, sometimes for the first time since their families purchased the properties back around 1900. This makes it more difficult to…
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Texas A&M AgriLife Extension has produced a series of short videos on prescribed burns called “Living with Texas Fire”. Even though it is focused on Texas, a lot of the information provided in the series is useful to anyone who is considering doing a prescribed burn. Of course, you will need to check your local…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
As of 5 am this morning, the National Hurricane Center announced that Ana has made the transition from subtropical to tropical storm with the development of convection close to the center and upper level outflow. No change in the predicted impacts are expected. Tropical storm warnings are up along the South and North Carolina coasts…
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With the exception of flooding rains at a few locations in Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas, most of the country was very dry this week. The dry conditions did allow planting of corn and other crops in the Midwest to advance significantly from last week. However, the dry conditions have caused problems for winter wheat, which…
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The Packer is running a story today on this year’s Vidalia onion harvest and the impacts of the recent rainy weather on the crop. In the story they describe conflicting reports on the state of the onion crop due to the weather. The USDA is reporting that recent rains “curtailed harvest” and contributed to some crop…
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I’ve seen some interesting stories about atmospheric optical effects lately. Here are a couple you might be interested in reading. NOVA on Public Broadcasting had a good story about mirages and seeing the city of Chicago appear upside down over a cold Lake Michigan (link). EarthSky also had an interesting article about why the sky…