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Water supplies in the Middle East can be highly variable and at times hard to come by. Lebanese farmers have used novel methods for collecting rainwater to help supplement irrigation water for crop production. But in recent years, rainfall has gotten more scarce, leading to difficulty in maintaining their crops with a dwindling water supply.…
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While we don’t know the status of the orange crop in Florida yet, prior to the storm making landfall speculators were concerned about a significant hit to the citrus crop from the storm, according to this article in Bloomberg (may be paywalled). Growers are already under stress due to citrus greening, and some were not…
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The remains of Hurricane Ian are still affecting North Carolina and Virginia, but once they move off to the east, the region will be completely dry, with a cool high pressure area parked over us. This will be good for farmers who are trying to get back into their fields and need drier conditions to…
Posted in: Climate outlooks -
The rejuvenated Hurricane Ian finished crossing the Atlantic and made a third landfall (after Cuba and Florida) this afternoon as a category-1 storm. Landfall occurred near Georgetown, just up the coast from Charleston. The storm is still moving through the Carolinas now as a post-tropical storm, since it has lost its tropical characteristics as a…
Posted in: Tropical weather -
During the day today, Tropical Storm Ian (downgraded from a category 4 hurricane to a TS as it crossed Florida earlier overnight) completed its crossing of the Florida peninsula and emerged over the Atlantic Ocean just north of Cape Canaveral earlier today. It regained hurricane strength over the warm Gulf Stream and is currently headed…
Posted in: Tropical weather -
The latest Drought Monitor, released this morning, shows an expansion of moderate (D1) drought in Virginia and North and South Carolina and abnormally dry (D0) conditions in Alabama and Georgia as almost no rain fell in the last week. By comparison, drought was eliminated and dry conditions shrunk in Florida, which felt the early effects…
Posted in: Drought -
Over the course of the day, Hurricane Ian continued to move northeast towards the west coast of Florida, strengthening as it approached the coast. At around 3 pm EDT it made landfall near Fort Myers with winds speeds of over 150 mph, just a few mph short of a category 5 hurricane. The images I…
Posted in: Tropical weather