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Citrus farmers in California are building private reservoirs on their own land hoping to protect their orchards against the loss of water in future droughts when water is tightly controlled and water users are pitted against each other. The reservoirs, which are more like giant farm ponds than true reservoirs which rely on a dammed…
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Many farmers will be happy this week if they need dry weather to harvest. After the current band of rain moves south, most of the Southeast (with the exception of Florida) will have dry and cool conditions, although warmer conditions will return by the end of the week. Many areas will get less than 1/10…
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The Facebook feed for “This Day in Weather History” reminded me that in 1999, Hurricane Floyd was approaching the Southeast with winds of 145 mph. It did not hit the coast but veered north, paralleling the coast and causing massive evacuations and traffic problems. Some of the current policies in place for using interstate highways…
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September 10 marks the middle of the Atlantic tropical season, as seen in the graph below. Today we are up to storm H for “Henri”, which is headed northeast and poses no threat to the US. There are currently three “X’s” in the Atlantic, with one at 50% chance of developing into a tropical cyclone…
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A few years ago, I was sitting in the stands watching my son’s high school football game. From the bleachers, I could see thunderstorms approaching the area. Finally, I saw a lightning stroke just to the south. By counting the seconds from the visible strike to hearing the thunder, I could tell it was just…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
Did you know that the vast majority of weather data that goes into weather forecast models comes not from ground measurements, but from satellite observations? This increase in global data, plus the increased power of computers, has improved weather forecasting dramatically over time. It’s hard to believe that satellite meteorology only started in the 1960’s,…
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If you follow tropical forecasts closely, as I do, you will be interested in this post-storm analysis of Tropical Storm Erika. The National Hurricane Center provides a report here which explains why Erika’s forecast was not as good as predictions of tropical storms in previous years.