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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.…
Posted in: Events -
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…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
Many of you will be traveling sometime during the next week to visit friends or relatives over Christmas week. Looks like there will be a good bit of storminess this week over the eastern half of the country as well as a big storm hitting the Pacific Northwest. Pay special attention if you are flying,…
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AgWeb published a report today on a talk given to the Texas Plant Protection Association by Carlos Rubinstein, chairman of the Texas Water Development Board. The talk covered the effects of recent droughts on crop and livestock production in the state. Rubinstein reviewed the impacts of the 2009-2011 drought on farm incomes and discussed the growing population in Texas…
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Clint Thompson of UGA published an article this week in Growing Georgia which notes the unusually large losses in tobacco this year due to black shank disease. He said that losses were between 4 and 5 percent of the state’s 12,000-plus tobacco acres. The heaviest losses were in Coffee and Berrien counties, Georgia’s top tobacco-producing…
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The winter solstice this year is on December 21. The winter solstice is the date on which the sun is lowest in the sky and the day is the shortest of the year. It marks the start of astronomical winter (remember, climatological winter starts on December 1). But it is not necessarily the day with…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
The latest Drought Monitor came out this morning and shows that severe drought has been reduced to less than half a percent of the Southeast. It is now confined to an area in the panhandle of Alabama surrounding Mobile. Abnormal dryness continues in many areas of the Southeast except for the Florida peninsula, but is…