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Today marks the anniversary of one of North Carolina’s worst tornado outbreaks in history. The State Climate Office of North Carolina offers this blog posting on the storms (link). Another excellent article about this outbreak can be found at https://www.ustornadoes.com/2013/04/16/north-carolinas-largest-tornado-outbreak-april-16th-2011/.
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -

The rainy conditions we’ve been having this week can be attributed in part to the El Nino which is currently underway in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and is expected to continue for the next few months. You might be wondering what other agricultural impacts are likely in an El Nino year. The folks at AgroClimate.org…
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We’re halfway through April and I thought it might be interesting to look at how the climate is doing so far this month. The maps below from the High Plains Regional Climate Center show the month to date departures from normal for temperature and precipitation. The maps clearly show that so far April is running…
Posted in: Climate summaries -

Eighty years ago yesterday, the most famous dust storm of the Dust Bowl Era occurred in Oklahoma and Texas. You’ve probably seen pictures of the tremendous wall of black soil picked up by the strong winds and blown for miles across the Great Plains. The sight of all this dirt carried by the wind prompted…
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We received round one of this week’s rain Sunday and yesterday. I received almost 2 inches at my house on the east side of Athens, GA. Tuesday there is a respite before the next deluge begins, although with afternoon heating there is a chance of some showers even today. But the radar shows the next…
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The rain in the Southeast this week has cut down the amount of pollen in the air by quite a bit this week. Trees are leafing out, which means that the pollen-bearing flowers are dropping off. But there are plenty of other sources of pollen still to come. You can see a list of common…
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One of the consequences of the continuing drought in California has been the unprecedented string of extremely high temperatures that have occurred in the last few years. Normally a portion of the sun’s energy that hits the earth goes to evaporating water from the surface, either from soils or water bodies or indirectly through evapotranspiration…