Tropical weather
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The first official outlook for the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season was released today by the folks at Colorado State University. It shows that due to the continued presence of La Nina and the expectation that it will return to neutral by summer but not switch to El Nino, another active hurricane season is expected for…
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Hurricane Michael came onshore near Panama City, FL, in October 2018. It rapidly intensified just before it made landfall, bringing winds of up to 155 mph along with a devastating storm surge that devastated areas near the coast as well as inland. But in spite of the fact that several years have passed, some lower-income…
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The Weather Channel had an interesting story this weekend about two wildfires that burned in the Florida Panhandle last week. The fires were attributed to dry, windy conditions combined with abundant fuel that was composed of downed trees and debris left over from Hurricane Michael in 2018. You may recall that Michael made landfall near…
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Happily, we are not in a drought in most of the Southeast right now, but sooner or later we will go into another one? Will it be this year? Too early to say. But here’s some new research that looks at the impacts of tropical storm rainfall on droughts in the eastern half of the…
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A new study published in Nature Geoscience indicates that in a warmer climate, the latitudes at which hurricanes can form are expected to expand, so that in the future tropical storms and hurricanes may be able to form farther north than they do now. This is based in part on the expansion of 80 F…
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You’ve probably seen many pictures of the devastation caused by the tornadoes that hit the Arkansas, Illinois, and Kentucky areas a few days ago. What you might not know is that the tornado that hit Mayfield, KY, also destroyed an Extension research farm near there. Fortunately, no one was in the building that night and…
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Is there a long-term trend in hurricanes? In the past, scientists have thought that there was a 30-year cycle in hurricane numbers, but more recent studies have shown a trend in Atlantic hurricanes that is increasing over time. Interestingly, this trend does not appear in records for other basins. Here is a new study published…