• Happy Thanksgiving!

    I am thankful to all my readers, especially those who get my email of posts every day! I appreciate your attention and your comments. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and a great holiday season coming up. Maybe even a little snow for some of you, although December so far looks warmer than…

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  • Changes in the frequency of heavy rain and cold outbreaks have caused challenges for fruit growers in Michigan, where I grew up. Late cold outbreaks in spring have caused frost damage to some fruit like blueberries and peaches, and heavy rains have caused erosion and other issues for many orchards. There are some methods producers…

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  • How do you know how plants will respond to changes in climate? You try them out in different conditions to see how well they grow in a less than ideal climate and see whether or not they survive. Here is an interesting story from Atlas Obscura describing one testbed at the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards in…

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  • What is wind?

    For those of you who are interested in the science of meteorology, here is a short explainer from Earth Networks that describes what causes wind and how it is measured. In brief, wind is just the flow of air caused by differences in air pressure that cause the air to move from areas of high…

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  • Bad weather this last year led to a smaller than expected pecan crop according to this story in the Southeast Farm Press this week. The crop got a lates start because of cool, erratic weather in the spring, which may have affected pollination. Rainy and cloudy weather through the summer caused problems with scab and…

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  • The latest seasonal climate outlook was released late last week by NOAA. It shows that in spite of the current cold conditions, temperature and precipitation patterns in the winter period from December through February are expected to be aligned with what we think of as typical La Nina patterns. That means warmer than normal temperatures…

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  • If you enjoy looking at time lapse images of clouds, you are sure to love this new video of time lapse photography taken from wildfire remote cameras across California. It’s about 5 minutes long and shows cloud imagery at a bunch of different remote camera sites.

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