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After the dismal yields of peaches in Georgia for the last two years, producers are excited that this year looks like it might be one of the best. This has been a much better winter for chill hours than the previous two, setting up the crop for good blooming. Even though early peach varieties that…
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The latest global climate summary for March 2018 is now available from NOAA and it shows that this past month was the 5th warmest on record for the earth as a whole since records began in 1880. The year to date global temperature for January through March was the 6th warmest on record. Sea ice…
Posted in: Climate summaries -
For those of you who are wondering whether or not our La Niña forecast for this winter has verified, here are the maps showing the temperature and precipitation anomaly patterns from October 1 to the present. Looks like a pretty classic La Niña to me, with warmer and drier conditions showing up across most of…
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NASA has released their global climate summary for March 2018. It shows that for the earth as a whole, this past March was the sixth warmest on record, 0.89 degrees C warmer than the 1951-1980 average. This is lower than the two hottest Marches in 2017 and 2016 and comparable to 2002, 2010 and 2015,…
Posted in: Climate summaries -
There is a persistent myth out there that tornadoes cannot hit certain geographical features like mountains, rivers or cities. However, there is ample evidence that this is false. I have seen a number of cases of cities being hit by tornadoes, including Dallas, Oklahoma City, Birmingham, and Atlanta. This week we had another example in…
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Winter weather and drought have hit the wheat crop of the Central Plains particularly hard this year, with an exceptional drought causing terribly dry conditions and frequent freezes and snowfalls stunting or injuring the young plants. According to a story this week in AgWeb,”U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) latest crop progress report is painting a grim…
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The latest issue of NOAA’s Beyond the Data blog by Deke Arndt looks at the statistics of March 2018 in the larger context of how to interpret anomaly maps and trends and discusses what a billion-dollar weather disaster really means. You can read it at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/all-things-being-equal-edition.