• The latest Drought Monitor, released on Thursday, show that an area of severe drought has been added to southeastern Georgia in response to very warm temperatures and lack of rainfall. Moderate drought was introduced to the South Carolina coast as well.  Drought was removed from northeastern Alabama and northwestern Georgia due to copious rain there.

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  • Drovers’ Newletter posted an interesting story today about the impacts of severe weather on forage quality and quantity. Flooding, drought, and high humidity all played a role in affecting forage production in 2017. This is a timely topic for me since I spoke today at a short course on forage and hay in Burke County,…

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  • The Southeast is not the only place that has been running above normal in temperature. The Packer noted this week that strawberry production in California is running about three weeks ahead of normal due to warm weather earlier this season. They also noted that recent cooler temperatures are helping to keep the plants healthy. You…

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  • The National Phenology Network (NPN) provides information about the progress of physical events like budbreak, appearance of some insects and specific pests, and ice-off dates on lakes (in cold areas of the country). A recent article using their phenology map shows that this year we are running about 22 days ahead of average conditions for…

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  • The latest monthly and seasonal climate summary for the US was released by NOAA today. You can read about it at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national-climate-201802.  During February, the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 35.4°F, 1.6°F above the 20th century average. This ranked among the warmest third of the 124-year period of record. The February precipitation total for the contiguous U.S. was 2.84 inches, 0.71 inch…

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  • Here is my latest short article on the climate outlook for the 2018 growing season, to be published in UGA’s Peanut Pointers newsletter later this week: In spite of what seemed like very cold temperatures over the winter, the April-like temperatures we experienced across the Southeast in February have left us well above normal in…

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  • Pacific Standard has published a new map based on a report from the EPA published quietly back in October which shows which counties in the US are most and least resilient to a changing climate, based on information from 117 different data sets. Unfortunately, the Southeast does not come off well, not necessarily due to…

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