Pam Knox

  • Completely dry week ahead for most

    High pressure will dominate the week, leaving all of the Southeast high and dry for the next seven days. Temperatures should be quite moderate and no chance of frost is seen in the long-range forecasts until the first week of November, although any forecast over a week out should be taken with some caution. The…

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  • NOAA released their latest 3-month predictions for November through January today. The maps show a clear El Nino signal in precipitation with wet conditions expected across southern AL and GA and northern FL, as expected from previous strong El Nino events. Temperature predictions show warmer than normal conditions across the northern part of the US…

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  • If you watch the weather forecasts carefully, either for regular weather or for tropical storms, you probably already know that meteorologists use multiple models to help make their predictions of what the weather is likely to be and how storm systems will move across an area. Forbes has a great description of why forecasters use…

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  • Drought expands across most of region

    The latest Drought Monitor, released today, shows the expansion of drought across most of the region, especially in northern and western parts of the states. Florida was the only state that saw an improvement in dry conditions, and Puerto Rico showed no change from last week. With relatively light rainfall amounts expected this week, it…

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  • Does El Nino mean more freezing nights?

    You might expect that in an El Nino winter, the chance of freezing nights would go up, since El Nino winters are generally cooler than average. I decided to test that by looking at the number of nights that the minimum temperature got below 32 F and seeing if years with El Nino had more…

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  • NOAA’s latest global climate summary, released late last week, shows that this past September 2023 was the warmest on record for the earth as a whole. Nearly all of the globe was warmer than average, with most of it well above average and a substantial fraction the warmest ever. For the year to date, the…

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  • Climate prediction is a combination of looking at patterns that historically have affected our region in the past (analogies with previous events) and what computer models are saying about what we can expect this year based on large-scale weather patterns and how they are expected to evolve over time using mathematical formulas and current observations.…

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