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Reuters posted a story this week on how one vineyard owner in France is increasing his income and improving his wines by putting solar panels above his grapevines. The solar panels produce energy that can be used or sold. The panels provide shade to the vines to help keep them cooler in warming weather. The…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
Here is a website that has monthly temperature and precipitation maps for the continental US going back to the 1920s. You can use it to look up what the anomalies and extreme climate were for any month since then. Just for fun I produced the map below showing the extent of extremely cold temperatures that…
Posted in: Sources of weather and climate data -
(UPDATE: New map as of 10:30 pm) I’ve been getting a few questions about how quiet the tropics are right now and whether we are done with the tropical season for this year. Here is the answer from Bryan Norcross, a television meteorologist from Miami with many years of experience in tropical weather. I follow…
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The latest 7-day QPF map shows that after the showers in the eastern parts of the Southeast move out today, we should have a mostly dry week for nearly all of the region. The exception is eastern North and South Carolina, under the influence of a weak disturbance that could briefly become a subtropical storm…
Posted in: Climate outlooks -
Did you know that excess heat costs the US dairy industry about $900 million per year? In this video from Yale Climate Connections, I learned that cows in Texas give a lot more milk in winter when the weather is cool than in summer, when heat is an issue. The dairy farmer in this video…
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The latest monthly climate summary for September 2021 was released by NOAA today. It shows that for the continental US, this past September was the 5th warmest since records began in 1895. The Southeast was one of those areas that did not follow this pattern, and most of the Southeast was cooler than normal. This…
Posted in: Climate summaries -
The last few years have brought many tropical storms and hurricanes to the Southeast. This week marks the 5-year anniversary of Hurricane Matthew, which dropped heavy rains on the East Coast, especially eastern North and South Carolina. The damage to agriculture, infrastructure, and housing from the wind and rain was vast. Corey Davis of the…