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The focus of stormy weather this week will be in the central US, which certainly needs the rain, although perhaps not the tornadoes and hail they are seeing this weekend. In the Southeast, we should see relatively light and scattered amounts of rain this week, with the highest amounts in southern Florida and in eastern…
Posted in: Climate outlooks -
I don’t talk about space weather too often because it usually does not affect climate or agriculture, but this is too interesting not to share. A new Mars expedition, the Emirates Mars Mission, the first interplanetary exploration undertaken by an Arab nation, today released stunning images of Mars’ mysterious auroras, including some new never-before seen…
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Wildfires propagate by sending sparks downwind, igniting the dry material and spreading the fire. A new study published in Nature Geoscience looks at the propagation of droughts and shows that droughts move by creating rainfall deficits that cause areas of dry soil downwind. That eventually expands the drought as rainfall is suppressed by the lack…
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The latest Drought Monitor, released today, shows that there have been slight expansions of drought in North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia this week due to lack of rainfall, while the other states did not change. Puerto Rico saw a slight decrease in dry conditions this week. Rainfall amounts the next few days should be relatively…
Posted in: Drought -
Impacts from the spring frosts are continuing to show up in peach crops across the Southeast. This story from Specialty Crop Industry discusses the variety of sizes in early peaches in Alabama as likely caused by the frost damaging flowers in the early-blooming varieties. Less impact is showing up in the later-blooming varieties so far,…
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I’ve gotten some emails lately asking about how to report dry conditions and drought so that the Drought Monitor authors recognize that things are getting crunchy here in parts of the Southeast. Here is a refresher on what sites you can use to do it: There are a lot of different tools for monitoring drought…
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Forecasts of where hurricanes will go and how strong they will get have improved over time, but errors associated with the prediction cones can cost coastal communities a lot of money if they evacuate unnecessarily if a storm turns away or if they don’t prepare for a storm that is closer or stronger than expected.…