Tropical weather
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The Tampa Bay Times reported this week that losses due to the destruction of Hurricane Irma on Florida agriculture are increasing as the harvest advances. The biggest loser may be the citrus industry, which continues to see more losses as damage to the fruit from the winds comes to light. The losses to citrus alone…
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If you’ve never heard the term ‘medicane’ then you are not alone. A rare tropical storm is forming in the Mediterranean Sea and is already causing big impacts on Greece, including torrential flooding. Very few of these storms, dubbed ‘medicanes” has ever been seen because the ocean temperatures and atmospheric dynamics there are not usually…
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Here is a very cool video showing the atmospheric loading by dust, smoke, sea salt, and other aerosol tracers over the 2017 hurricane season. It’s amazing to watch the dance of different aerosol types and see the hurricanes develop and move over the Atlantic Ocean as the season progresses. The smoke coming off the western…
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Pecans are one of the most valuable crops grown in the Southeast, and the impacts of Hurricane Irma hit pecan growers pretty hard this year, with about 30% of the nuts blown off the trees in the storm. Trees were also blown over or dropped limbs and may need to be replaced. Vegetable and Specialty…
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A recent article from Florida State University looks back at the 2017 hurricane season and discusses what, if anything, it can tell us about how a warmer climate in the future might affect the hurricanes that hit the Southeast. The short answer is that the number of hurricanes does not seem to be affected but…
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The latest estimates from the USDA regarding the orange harvest this year have dropped the expected yield by 7.4 percent, to 50 million boxes, from last month’s estimate. Producers generally considered last month’s estimates too high because all of the accumulated losses from Hurricane Irma have not yet been seen, much less quantified. Some delayed…
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Reports on damage caused by the wind and rain of Hurricane Irma are still coming in, and they look bad. Vegetable and Specialty Crop News posted a story this week about one strawberry farmer’s impacts on his fields from the ravaging wind, which tore out most of his plastic sheeting, and heavy rains, which eroded…