Tools for climate and agriculture
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Now that it is fall, livestock producers are starting to think about how to feed their cattle over the winter. If you use warm-season forages, then you have to feed hay or grain to your cattle over the winter months. Adding cool-season annual forages to the mix can cut costs and keep your cattle healthy.…
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In our Drought Monitor Forum this week, we are being reminded of the variety of tools that are available to help monitor drought conditions across your region. You can find a list of many of these tools, including the Historical Drought Atlas, soil moisture maps, and vegetation drought response index, on the Drought Monitor site…
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With Hurricane Dorian intensifying and forecast to impact Florida and other areas of the southeast US in the next week, the USDA Southeast Climate Hub has consolidated the following resources for agriculture, aquaculture, and forestry, to help producers prepare for and recover from potential hurricane impacts. Note that many of these are drafts and they…
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Are you frustrated that the Drought Monitor is not accurately reflecting dry conditions in your area? It may be that they do not have any data there other than radar-based rainfall. Reports from “on the ground” can be invaluable for drawing the correct drought lines. Here is a new mobile-friendly site for reporting drought conditions…
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Summer rainfall can be highly variable in space and time. You’ve probably all seen a shaft of rain covering part of your town while bypassing other areas, or compared rainfall amounts with neighbors and found quite a difference from your own. If you are monitoring a county for rainfall amounts or have fields scattered over…
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Just in time for the latest heat way, the Midwestern Regional Climate Center announced a new interactive heat index map for the US which shows the average number of hours with the heat index above several thresholds. This is available for the first order weather stations at the larger airports. You can view it at…
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The NWS office in Birmingham AL has prepared a series of seven short videos highlighting hurricane awareness and preparedness that are now available on YouTube. These videos are good for everyone to review but are especially useful because they are closed captioned and also feature an American Sign Language interpreter. You can see the first…