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I don’t think anyone would argue that access to water is one of the most important factors that determine what you can grow and whether you can make a living farming. Here in the Southeast, we get on average 50 inches of precipitation, mostly rain, each year, with moisture streaming in from the Gulf of…
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If you follow national climate news, you have probably seen a lot of splashy information on the 5th National Climate Assessment, which was released Tuesday morning to a lot of acclaim and a huge roll-out of information about the changing climate in the United States. I was one of the authors of the Southeast chapter,…
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The Atlantic tropical season officially ends on November 30. While it’s been pretty quiet lately, there is one area that the National Hurricane Center is flagging for likely development in the next week. Fortunately, it looks like it will not affect the Southeast except perhaps for Puerto Rico and possibly some rain in Florida (although…
Posted in: Tropical weather -
My friend Bob Kemerait wrote an article this week for Southeast Farm Press that describes how El Nino may affect your planting plans next growing season. He quoted me in it, so you might be interested in reading it. The important thing to keep in mind is that even though El Nino is currently occurring…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center issued their latest ENSO forecast earlier this week. As expected, it continues to show that the current El Nino is strong and is likely to continue through late spring before swinging back to neutral conditions. You can read their discussion at https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml. You might also be interested in reading the latest…
Posted in: El Nino and La Nina -
The latest 7-day QPF map shows that the southern half of the region should get a lot of rain this week, especially mid-week. Northern parts of the region will see much less precipitation and a lot of Virginia should get none at all. This should improve drought conditions where the rain falls, but drought may…
Posted in: Climate outlooks -
Drought conditions expanded across the region this week, with extreme (D3) drought added to areas of Virginia and South Carolina. The biggest change was the addition of exceptional (D4) drought in northwest GA and northeast Al due to complete lack of rain combined with warm temperatures over most of the last month. It has not…
Posted in: Drought