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The heavy rain and snow that has been occurring along the West Coast has caused problems for onion handlers in Idaho and Oregon, according to The Packer this week. Deep snow on top of packing and storage facilities was then saturated by rain, which added enough weight to the onion packing structures to cause them…
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Vegetable and Specialty Crop News ran an interesting story today about attempts to improve the knowledge and marketability of Florida peaches. For example, did you know that Florida peaches are available in mid-March through early May but most consumers buy their peaches in June, July and August when they are already out of season? You…
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The New York Times posted an interesting story this week about the Jackson Family Wines farms and how producers there are dealing with drier and warmer conditions in a variety of novel ways. Their methods include using owls and falcons to scare away pests drawn by warmer weather, drones to assess crop health, and reservoirs…
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NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information have just released a set of very useful and descriptive state climate summaries that discuss both past climate and projections of future climate. A separate publication is available for each state, and includes graphics for temperature, precipitation, extreme events and sea level (for coastal states). You can read about…
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NOAA released their 2016 climate summary this morning. It shows that for the lower 48 states, 2016 was the second warmest on record with 54.9 F, following the record warm year of 2012, which had 55.3 F. According to the report, this marks the 20th consecutive year that the annual average temperature for the CONUS…
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The State Climate Office of North Carolina has released a report on the snow storm that affected the Southeast this past weekend. While I saw only 0.2 inches at my house in Athens, GA, many other places saw more substantial amounts of snow and ice. You can read about the impacts on North Carolina at https://climate.ncsu.edu/climateblog?id=225&h=5666e5c1.…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
The end of the year has come and gone and now we are both looking back to the past and looking ahead to what will happen in the next growing season. I want to take a few minutes to highlight the last year’s climate and to look forward to the next year. NOAA will publish…