• EarthSky magazine noted today that tonight the Earth will reach its closest point in its orbit to the sun, right around 1:30 am EST on the 4th.  You can read about it here. Many people think that winter is caused by how far our planet is from the sun, but really the seasons are caused…

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  • The latest Drought Monitor report came out on Thursday and shows that most drought in the Southeast is gone due to recent rains.  Only a small area around Mobile Bay in AL is still showing moderate drought.  You can see the latest Drought Monitor at https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/RegionalDroughtMonitor.aspx?southeast.  This often happens over the winter, when evaporation is low…

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  • The climate summary for North Carolina for December 2014 has now been posted.  You can find it at https://nc-climate.ncsu.edu/climateblog?id=112&h=5666e5c1.  

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  • Reports from weather observers are still coming in for the end of 2014, but there are some preliminary results for 2014.  The temperatures across the Southeast were generally near to below normal for the year, but fairly mild compared to the region of very cold temperatures in the Great Lakes and the hot conditions in…

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  • Happy New Year to all of you!  I had a good but busy holiday season, and am looking forward to getting the blog going again.  We’ve redone the spam setting on comments so you should be able to add your remarks again.  Hope you all had a restful holiday season and all your football teams…

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  • I’ll be taking a couple of weeks off to spend time with family and friends this holiday season, and I hope that you get the chance to do the same.  I will be suspending entries to this blog until early January, when I will return to kick off the New Year with the December and annual summaries.…

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  • EarthSky posted a neat article this week describing why most evergreen trees have a pyramid shape.  The narrow shape on top helps reduce snow loads in the snowy climates they are often found in.  The shape also helps reduce wind resistance, which is important for these trees with shallow root systems.  You can read the…

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