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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.
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If you follow the national Drought Monitor, you know that parts of Oklahoma are currently in D4 Exceptional Drought, the highest classification of drought there is. Because of this, things are tinder-dry, and there have been many wildfires which have affected cattle production in the area. Here is a story and scary video of one…
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The latest ENSO update from NOAA at Climate.org shows that a blob of warmer than normal temperatures is slowly moving eastward under the surface of the equatorial Pacific Ocean and should displace the cold water that remains from the fading La Niña in the next few months. That has increased the chances of an El…
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The USDA Climate Hubs recently published a paper describing the results of a survey of their field agents and how they are dealing with increases in extreme weather and changes in climate over recent decades. You can read more information about the report at https://www.climatehubs.oce.usda.gov/hubs/topic/usda-field-staff-surveys. According to that page, “In order to better support NRCS and…