• The latest 7-day QPF shows that parts of the Southeast may get a little rain later this weekend in conjunction with the development of a coastal low pressure center off the East Coast, but amounts are expected to be light.  The rest of the week will be dry, but we could see a rainmaker come…

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  • The smoke has cleared, at least temporarily, from Athens this morning and it smells less smoky, which means the plume is now going elsewhere.  Here are a couple of pictures of the Rough Ridge fire in northern GA which the NWS Peachtree City posted yesterday.  You can read more about efforts to fight these fires…

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  • At dinner tonight my husband asked me how the current drought compared to 2007.  So here’s a little look at the similarities and differences between the two droughts. In some respects the two droughts look very similar.  At this time of year in early November, both of them showed a spatial pattern that covered the…

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  • A couple of Facebook posts this morning remind me that it is time to think about cold weather returning to our region.  NWS Peachtree City has posted freeze warnings for Saturday night into Sunday morning for the northeast Georgia mountains. At least one of the CoCoRaHS observers has already reported temperatures down to 28 F…

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  • The smell of smoke outside my office today is very strong.  It’s due to the wild fires associated with the drought that are occurring across many parts of the Southeast this week.  Marshall Shepherd provides some information about the smoky conditions at Forbes.com here. EPA also has a good site which shows the track of…

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  • “Hello, La Niña!”

    Today NOAA put out a La Niña Advisory for conditions in the eastern Pacific Ocean.  This advisory replaces the La Niña Watch that has been active on and off for the last few months.  This means that colder than normal water temperatures have been present along the equator in the eastern Pacific Ocean for long…

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  • Allison Floyd wrote an interesting story in Growing Georgia this week about research underway at the University of Georgia to find a more drought-resistant strain of sorghum, which already does well in dry conditions.  She reports: “When University of Georgia plant geneticist Andrew Paterson started to look for lines of sorghum that might survive in…

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