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This week’s Drought Monitor shows a slight expansion of abnormally dry conditions across the Southeast. Increases occurred in Alabama and North and South Carolina due to warm temperatures and lack of rain. No dry conditions are currently observed in Virginia, Georgia and Florida. The next seven days show relatively little rain for the abnormally dry…
Posted in: Drought -
A new research study published recently in Geophysical Research Letters indicates that in a warmer climate the swings back and forth between El Niño and La Niña may amplify, making year to year variability between the different phases more extreme. It may also make differences from one place to another larger in a given event.…
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Thirteen years ago today, Hurricane Katrina came onshore in eastern Louisiana. While the winds were down to 75-80 mph, the storm surge was massive, in some places higher than 28 feet, and wiped out blocks along the coastline stretching from the Florida Panhandle well across most of Louisiana. Two days later, New Orleans started to…
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Thirteen years ago today, Major Hurricane Katrina was barreling north towards the Gulf Coast as a category 5 storm. Robert Ricks of the National Weather Service put out one of the most chilling weather forecasts that I and my husband (also a meteorologist) had ever seen. Sadly, some people and even news agencies thought it…
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If you’ve ever wondered how the global average temperature is calculated, especially considering that we don’t have surface temperature observations at many point on the globe (especially the poles), then this article is for you. The Climate Lab Book blog from the U. K., provides an excellent scientific overview of how a global mean temperature…
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After a very quiet couple of months, the Atlantic tropics are beginning to heat up, just as the most active period of hurricane development begins. The sea surface temperatures, which were near record-setting cold earlier in the year, are now close to normal, and the plumes of Saharan dust which were also inhibiting storm formation…
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If you have ever been asked to provide a summary of your state’s climate, here is a good resource for you. The National Centers for Environmental Information have a set of state climate summaries available at https://statesummaries.ncics.org/. These summaries look at past climate state by state and also look at future climate scenarios that help you…
Posted in: Sources of weather and climate data