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The latest climate predictions from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center are out and show that for June, July and August 2020, temperatures across the Southeast are leaning towards warmer than normal conditions and precipitation is leaning towards wetter than normal amounts. That does not mean there will be no dry or cool spells, but at this…
Posted in: Climate outlooks -
As a meteorologist I often roll my eyes when I hear comments about weather models always being wrong. In fact, most of them are very good, but even the best aren’t perfect, because there are inherent errors in input data, simplifications of atmospheric processes like precipitation formation which happen on small scales, computing errors due…
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The latest Drought Monitor, released this morning, shows that the severe drought in Florida has been reduced but two areas still remain in southwest FL and a small patch in the Panhandle. Alabama had very slight increases in drought, and abnormally dry conditions stretched north into the area along the southern border of Georgia. Relatively…
Posted in: Drought -
Two new research studies on tropical cyclones (the generic name for hurricanes across the world) shows that hurricanes are getting stronger over time and are also forming farther from the equator, putting new populations at risk. These studies, both based on satellite observations, show that climate change is having an impact on the formation and…
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The official NOAA forecast for the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season was released today. It’s no surprise that they predicted a 60 percent chance of an more active than average season, because four other groups have already predicted the same. The lack of an El Nino coupled with above-average ocean surface temperatures and being on the…
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You may have seen some videos and photos of flooding in northeastern Michigan over the last couple of days. Heavy rain there caused two dams to fail, raising water levels downstream by as much as 9 feet and causing 10,000 residents to evacuate. One of the dams had been declared unsafe by inspectors in 2018…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
I ran across an article this week in the Metropolitan Planning Council newsletter out of Chicago which discussed how rainstorms are now producing more rain than they have in the past. The article is here. They talk about how 100-year rain events now have more rain than in the past in their area. For example,…