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The USDA announced yesterday that they have a new set of web sites for their Climate Hub program. The website is located at https://climatehubs.oce.usda.gov/. In addition to regional information, they also have livestock and crop pages which discuss current research and activities. An events calendar is also listed on the main page. For a discussion…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
The latest Drought Monitor has just been released and shows that drought conditions in the Southeast have remained almost unchanged from last week. The dry conditions we have seen for the last few days are fairly typical for October, which is one of the driest months in the Southeast, and are expected to continue for…
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I love to watch the skies, and tonight we get a treat as the Southeast will observe a partial solar eclipse around sunset on Thursday, October 23. A solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun. This time the moon will not completely obscure the sun, so it will just…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
On Tuesday the USDA announced a new Farm Bill initiative to assist agricultural producers with losses from severe weather, including drought, according to Growing Georgia. They report “The Actual Production History (APH) Yield Exclusion, available nationwide for farmers of select crops starting next spring, allows eligible producers who have been hit with severe weather to…
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Weather information is one of the most important things farmers need to know when planning daily and weekly work as well for longer-term farm management. Every producer I talk to has a different favorite source of weather data they like to use for their planning. Some sources include The Weather Channel and internet web sites…
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The Future Tense blog at Slate.com provided some good commentary on seasonal forecasting in their blog entry from October 17. Winter seasons are the easiest to predict, because they are generally tied to the presence or absence of El Nino in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. This is especially true in the southern portions of the…
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The results of the 2014 hay contest are in, and show a marked improvement over 2013, when wet weather caused poor forage conditions across the Southeast. Here is a paragraph from the contest summary: “Weather is always a major limiting factor when attempting to produce high quality forage. This year, dry conditions in the later…