Drought

  • People have been asking me if this is a record-setting winter for temperature.  Using the Southeast Regional Climate Center’s Perspectives tool at https://www.sercc.com/perspectives?user=true, you can look at maps which show the rankings for the month or season to date.  With just a couple of days left to go in the season, the maps show that while…

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  • The latest Drought Monitor, released this morning, shows the reintroduction of extreme drought into west-central Alabama and the expansion of moderate drought in Virginia, the western Carolinas, and northwest Alabama.  Florida’s dry conditions remain unchanged, although rain since the cut-off date of Tuesday may improve things next week.

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  • A recent study on droughts in the Middle East shows that the recent droughts that have plagued the area are the worst in at least 1100 years, according to a story this week in the American Geophysical Union blog.  The scientists in the study collected a stalagmite from a cave in Iraq which contained growth…

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  • A new handbook which describes the different types of drought indicators is now available from the World Meteorological Organization. It is available in several languages and also online.  You can access it at https://www.droughtmanagement.info/handbook-drought-indicators-and-indices/.

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  • Last week I reported that the Oroville Dam in northern California was in danger of losing its capacity to hold back water from the reservoir there, the second biggest one in California, due to a damaged spillway and water overtopping the emergency overland spillway due to heavy rains in the area.  Hundreds of thousands of…

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  • The latest Drought Monitor shows the expansion of abnormally dry conditions across Florida and the Carolinas this week, due in part to low rainfall amounts and also to the very warm temperatures the region has experienced this past week.  Areas of moderate drought have also been added to parts of northern Virginia and southern Florida. …

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  • Drovers Newsletter had a really interesting article this week on one livestock producer’s methods for getting ready to deal with drought.  You can find it here.  Some of his adaptation methods include having at least a year’s worth of food onsite and keeping cows that could be easily culled in a separate herd so you…

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