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The National Weather Service’s Southeast River Forecast Center released their latest water resources outlook video this week. You can find the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKQYR7aE4TU&feature=youtu.be. In it, the NWS river forecasters discuss the current state of water resources across the Southeast and the impacts that El Nino may have on the coming winter. With rainy conditions forecast…
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The State Climate Office of North Carolina has produced a short article describing the “dog days” of summer. According to the blog, “it turns out the dog days are more than just a linguistic turn of phrase. They are a distinct time of year ranging from July 3rd to August 11th (40 days) and correspond…
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Each week on Thursday morning the National Drought Monitor is updated to reflect the latest drought conditions across the US. You can find a comparison from one week to the next at https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/MapsAndData/WeeklyComparison.aspx. But do you know what the different drought categories mean? The CoCoRaHS group has put together a neat animated YouTube video which explains…
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A recent study by Florida State University researcher Vasu Misra shows that contrary to popular belief, tropical storms do not typically end droughts in the Southeast. By looking at changes in soil moisture over time in regions where tropical storms passed, they determined that tropical storms tended to come ashore in areas where the soils…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
Did you know that bananas are one of the biggest monocultures that exist in agriculture? Almost every banana we see in the grocery store is a clone of the Cavendish banana, which has disease resistance and good traveling qualities that make it profitable for banana farmers. But now a new disease called “Fusarium Oxysporum Tropical Race…
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The US Environmental Protection Agency released a new report recently which describes the impacts of global warming on agriculture, drought, ecosystems and water supplies, among other sectors. The report describes the effects of “business as usual” climate scenarios compared to a mitigation-based approach where greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. There are a number of sections…
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Bob Kemerait, a specialist at the University of Georgia in agriculture, recently published an article in Southeast Farm Press on dealing with heat after nearly experiencing a heat stroke while doing corn fungicide research in very hot conditions. In the article he muses on how increased warming might affect agriculture in the Southeast in the…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news