Sources of weather and climate data
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Even though it has been hot and mostly dry in the Southeast, in France and Spain soggy weather has caused problems for farmers as well as contributing to the floods that have plagued Paris in recent weeks. AgWeb posted an article this week saying that wheat harvesting is 8-10 days behind normal due to the…
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For those of you wondering how to know when to expect high levels of heat stress on livestock, the USDA has a great web site which contains daily heat stress maps for the US for up to a week ahead. Today’s forecast for Monday June 13 shows high levels of heat in a large area of…
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In my previous post I discussed the impacts of high heat on outdoor workers. Another source of stress is poor air quality, which can be either from high particulate levels or from corrosive ground-level ozone. Both of these can put stress on breathing in vulnerable populations. You can get air quality information from the Environmental…
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Tropical Storm Colin has come and gone, and you might wonder how much rain we got from the storm as it passed. Of course, the amount you got depends critically on where you are. Here in Athens where we were just on the edge of the storm I got a paltry 0.22 inches, and not…
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Spring has ended and the preliminary statistics show that for many areas in the Southeast, temperatures were much above normal, placing them in the top ten warmest on record. A number of stations were also in the top ten driest on record, particularly in the areas that are now experiencing drought. A few coastal stations…
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If you are interested in seeing which hurricanes and tropical storms have passed through your area in the past, you should try out the NOAA hurricane track viewer. You can access it at https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/historical-hurricane-tracks-gis-map-viewer. It includes tracks going back for the last 150 years, although areas far from land may be underrepresented because no satellites were…
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National Public Radio has an interesting story about efforts to rebuild Rwanda’s long-term climate record. Most stations were destroyed and records lost in the civil war which has torn apart the country, leaving a large gap in the historical record. The story describes some scientists’ efforts to find the missing data and rebuild the record…