Climate science
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When I talk about impacts of El Nino in the Southeast, I often mention that the jet stream moves south to a position that is usually located across southern AL and GA and northern FL. The jet stream pushes along the winter storm systems that bring rain (and occasionally snow) to the region. Cloud cover…
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Over the weekend we passed from astronomical summer to fall as the sun moved across the plane of the earth’s equator. Days just get shorter from now until the winter solstice in December. I can certainly tell the change, and I bet you can too. You can learn more about the fall equinox at EarthSky…
Posted in: Climate science -
Many of you complain about how poor the seasonal forecasts are and how much you would like to have better long-range forecasts for planning purposes. While predicting a specific weather event a year in advance is never going to happen, you might be interested in reading this story from Growing Produce on advances that scientists…
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This week Jim Downer, one of my colleagues at The Garden Professors blog, posted an article about how garden plants (and really most plants including crops) respond to very high temperatures. Fortunately, here in the Southeast we have not seem extremely high temperatures here very often this year, but the summer is not over so…
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You might expect that the Earth would be the coolest when it is farthest from the sun. But that date is today, and it is certainly not a cold day. This is known as the aphelion (I remember it as “A for away”) and it occurs because the earth’s orbit around the sun is not…
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You’ve probably heard the phrase “dog days of summer”. But what does it mean? And why is it commonly considered the period from July 3 to August 11? You can read more about it in this article from The Almanac at Dog Days: What Are the Dog Days of Summer? | July 3–August 11 |…
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Summer is the time of year when many of us take trips to visit friends or experience new places. Many of these trips are by airplane. Unfortunately, summer is also the time of year that thunderstorms most often occur, and they can cause a lot of problems with bumpy rides that may cause distress to…