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I’m attending a virtual conference on flash drought this week, and one of the things we have discussed so far is the difficulty in identifying where drought conditions are occurring, especially when they are just beginning to be felt. The current network of weather stations, even when supplemented with entries in the Drought Impact Reporter…
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Today marks the official end of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. But even as we speak, there is an area of interest in the eastern Atlantic that has a 40 percent chance of developing into a subtropical storm, although it won’t affect the Southeast. This has been an amazing and frustrating year for tropical weather…
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The latest 30-day climate outlook for December was released today by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. It shows that there is no strong trend towards warmer or colder conditions in December except in southern Florida. We know early December will be colder than normal, but late December is still expected to be warmer than normal so…
Posted in: Climate outlooks -
There are many impacts of a warming climate that are pretty easy to understand, such as more heat spells, longer growing seasons, and less snow in the Southeast. Here is another impact that did not occur to me–rising air pressure at higher altitudes due to the rising temperature. Outside magazine has a fascinating look at…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
With La Nina now firmly in place, producers are starting to think about what that means for crop and fruit production next year. We know that La Ninas tend to bring warmer and drier than normal weather to most of the Southeast, and this one is expected to be fairly strong, so all of the…
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A new research study published in Science shows that autumn leaves are falling earlier than in previous years, a surprise considering that warmer temperatures are moving the fall freezing temperatures later in the year. The scientists link this to quicker growth in the spring and maxing out the amount of carbon they can store. This…
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This week should be fairly wet for most of the Southeast, with the exception of southern Florida. One system will move through this weekend, bringing rain to the region and perhaps some snow in the higher elevations and northern states. Frost will end the growing season for many parts of the region except those near…
Posted in: Climate outlooks