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It’s been a very dry May across the Southeast so far. I was driving back to Athens from Quincy FL today and noted the large plumes of dust behind the tractors out planting in the fields in southwest Georgia. The radar-based precipitation map from the National Weather Service shows that many areas have received no…
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You’ve probably heard about the “urban heat island”, which is a pocket of warm temperatures created by pavement and buildings in the center of cities. It’s not surprising that Atlanta and other large cities have well-documented “heat islands” that make the cities warmer than surrounding areas. A bit more surprising is that even moderate sized…
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Compared to the wet April we just finished, May has started very dry this year. How does it rank compared to other years? You can use the SERCC’s Perspectives tool to help answer that question (even if you don’t live in the Southeast). The map below shows the regional map perspective on the ranking for…
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California’s four years of drought is now having another agricultural impact on farmers besides the shortages of water for irrigation in some areas. Livestock producers are starting to find their springs and wells drying up, sometimes for the first time since their families purchased the properties back around 1900. This makes it more difficult to…
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Texas A&M AgriLife Extension has produced a series of short videos on prescribed burns called “Living with Texas Fire”. Even though it is focused on Texas, a lot of the information provided in the series is useful to anyone who is considering doing a prescribed burn. Of course, you will need to check your local…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
In this series on sources of climate and weather information, we’ve looked at the state climatologists and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC–now part of NCEI, the National Centers for Environmental Information) so far. In between these two levels of data sources are the regional climate centers, also part of NOAA. The map of regional…
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Texas is the big winner in this coming week’s rain contest, with the potential for as much as 10 inches of rain possible over parts of the state. Here in the Southeast, most areas will receive less than an inch of rain except for areas near TS Ana in the eastern Carolinas. Coupled with the…
Posted in: Climate outlooks