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A preliminary estimate of agricultural losses in North Carolina due to Hurricane Florence was published today in the Southeast Farm Press as $1.1 billion based on acreage affected and the 5-year average of crop yields. By far the highest loss was due to row crops, which were near harvest and in many cases were complete…
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Do you think the humidity has been high this year? We certainly see the impacts of high dewpoint temperatures in night-time lows, which have been much above normal this summer. Dennis Mercereau of DAMWeather has done an interesting analysis of humidity conditions in the Eastern US this year and discovered that this has been an…
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The latest Drought Monitor, released this morning, shows that a small area of moderate drought has been introduced to the southern tip of South Carolina, which largely missed the rain from Hurricane Florence. Moderate drought and abnormally dry conditions expanded in central Georgia. Moderate drought decreased slightly in Alabama but the area of abnormally dry…
Posted in: Drought -
Scientific American recently published an article about a new study that looked at how different forests around the world handle drought. What they found was that forests that have a large variety of different tree species were more resilient in a drought than forests with few different types of trees. They attribute the difference to…
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A new scientific study described in a recent article in Scientific American looked at the impacts of raising livestock in a hot climate. The research determined that hogs raised in hot conditions gained less weight and muscle, reducing the amount of meat produced. At the same time, fertility goes down, reducing the number of piglets…
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An analysis of the deaths that have occurred due to Hurricane Florence by the Los Angeles Times shows that more than half of the victims of the storm died while in their cars. Most were due to drowning after the cars drove past barriers or were swamped by rising water, but some also occurred when…
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With all the rain we’ve had in the Southeast, you may have missed the tremendous floods that were occurring in Wisconsin this summer. Dairy farmers there are suffering from the impacts of all that flooding, including contaminated or moldy feed. The State of Wisconsin issued a warning to their farmers about keeping an eye out…