Drought
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One of the consequences of the continuing drought in California has been the unprecedented string of extremely high temperatures that have occurred in the last few years. Normally a portion of the sun’s energy that hits the earth goes to evaporating water from the surface, either from soils or water bodies or indirectly through evapotranspiration…
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Allison Floyd of Growing Georgia had an article this week discussing the increasing interest in Southern pecans due to the California drought. As we’ve discussed previously in this blog, California is one of the main sources of nuts in the US (and the world), but the nut orchards require a lot of water to maintain…
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Most of the stories I’ve published lately have dealt with the drought in California. And it’s no wonder, since California is the primary region for a lot of agriculture in the US. But other areas of the west are also suffering from the extended drought in the region. Here are a couple of stories about…
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The latest issue of the National Drought Monitor was released this morning. It shows that abnormally dry conditions and drought expanded slightly across the Southeast, especially in Florida, Alabama and Georgia. An area of moderate drought was reintroduced to southwestern Georgia and an area of severe drought was added to southeast Alabama. You can get…
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I’ve seen a couple of interesting stories on groundwater today that I thought I would pass along. One is on the continuing crisis in the groundwater levels in California due to a combination of drought and extensive pumping, mostly by agricultural producers. You can read that story from the New York Times here. The story…
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The 7-day QPF for this coming week shows a continuation of the split pattern we have seen over the last couple of weeks. Wet conditions should continue to occur in northern parts of the Southeast, while southern areas, especially southern Florida, will see lower than normal rainfall. This may increase the extent of abnormally dry…
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AgWeb posted an article this week on the impacts of the continuing California drought on dairies in the region. Competition for scarce water has led to fallowed crops and higher costs for irrigation. A shift to permanent crops like nut trees has also removed acreage once used to produce feed for dairy cattle. Dropping milk prices…